


quotidien

by nisakomi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Multi, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 15:05:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11877069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi
Summary: Soonyoung barely has enough time in a week for school, work, studying, eating, and sleeping. He definitely doesn't have enough time to fall in love.





	quotidien

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soonhui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soonhui/gifts).



> i've literally never spent so long on a single project...i'm so sorry  
> this has the pace of a ticking clock and probably reads really boring  
> i wanted to challenge myself on time travel fic but i didn't realize it'd be this hard  
> the flow is awful and the fic is shit  
> but i rly love u loads imee  
> and at least it's finished now  
> it's over
> 
> zzz

Mid-morning sunlight filters through the gaps of the off-white blinds. On the bedside table, a dusty alarm clock flickers alive, speakers fading in the first notes of a girl group song with a fast tempo that urges Soonyoung into consciousness, its catchy hook crawling through his ear canal and firmly affixing itself to his brain with its fresh summer sound.

He would hum along with the chorus if his sinuses were up to the task, but between his just-woken state and the pillow mashed up against his face impeding any breathing through his nose, even the chipper voices and thought of pretty girls with hot-iron curls in their bleached pigtails isn’t enough to spark a sing-along in Soonyoung. Eventually he musters up the energy to roll over on the thin mattress, pillow still pressed to his cheek to shade his eyes, and works his way up into a kneeling position, from which he groans, shakes his head, and leaps off the side of the bed. The pop tune on the radio transitions into a synth-heavy dance track. Less easy to sing, but with a pulsating beat that he shimmies along to while bunching up a pair of slacks to force over his ankles. After dressing, brushing his teeth, and slinging a duffle bag with a change of sweatpants and a baggy graphic tee over his shoulder, he catches sight of himself in the full length mirror by the front door. The reflection of his eyes in the mirror sparkle and his bangs sitting just above his eyebrows shift a little when Soonyoung smiles. Another day begins. A good day.

 

 

 

 

 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry! I woke up late and had to speed through food prep…I swear I’ll make you a four course meal one of these days, hyung.” Mingyu slides a bowl of congee in front of him, along with a kimchi pancake, marinated grilled beef, and several pickled vegetables, which serves as Soonyoung’s breakfast and lunch.

“One of these days, hm…? When’s that gonna be?” Soonyoung laughs, pulling up a chair to the counter, as physically far away from the stove as he can get while still in the kitchen. “You’ve been saying that for the past month.”

He watches Mingyu putter around to check on their stocks of side dishes and steamed rice. His tone is teasing but the truth remains that the meals he eats now, prepared by Mingyu, are several magnitudes better than what he’d be eating if he were cooking for himself – instant rice, left over kimchi, maybe a boiled egg. Soonyoung isn’t about to complain.

Mingyu, however, also wants to show off. “Yeah, definitely before the end of the summer, I swear! I have to, or else you might never taste the true class of my cooking abilities if one of us doesn’t come back for winter break.”

“I’m working part time over the fall semester so,” Soonyoung says, turning around to rummage for a spoon.

“I—” He breaks off from whatever he was about to say. “Really? On top of classes? How are you going to do that? I can barely go to class and finish my assignments as is.”

“Well, most of us wake up on time and aren’t late to literally everything in our schedules on a daily basis.” He grins at Mingyu’s immediate pout. “Have you, I don’t know, tried setting up an alarm or something?”

Mingyu throws up his hands, and a stray clump of rice flies from the paddle into his hair. “I have six! It drives my roommate nuts because he wakes up for all of them and then, I quote, ‘watches me snore through them all’. I don’t understand - why doesn’t it affect me when it vibrates right beside my bed but he wakes up even if he sleeps in the bunk above?”

“How do you wake up at all if you sleep through all the alarms?” Soonyoung asks around a mouthful of the savory rice porridge.

“My roommate usually throws something at me and if it hurts enough I’ll wake up and throw something back.”

Soonyoung should probably say something about the rice in his hair but he’s too busy laughing. “That’s funny, I like your roommate.”

“Yeah, you would.” Mingyu snorts. “I know it’s like a different thing from what you do but he’s into breakdancing? And he’s kind of got that little kid cuteness that Channie has. You adopted _him_ like your own child…with Minghao he’s more acting but I think you’d like him as well.”

“I want as many children as possible.” Soonyoung tears off a piece of pancake with his teeth from his chopsticks and chews noisily with his mouth open. “Let me meet this kid, I’ll adopt him too.”

“Alright,” Mingyu agrees easily, gloved hands scrubbing an enormous amount of buckwheat noodles in a huge basin.

Mingyu’s remarkably efficient with the whole process, like he had been since the very first time he was asked to wash anything when he was originally hired as the newest kitchen hand in the restaurant.

Mrs. Ki, the ever youthful-looking sexagenarian owner of _10:10_ , had been fairly surprised at his proficiency. “Have you cooked before?” she had asked, “Worked part time jobs in other restaurants?”

“No,” Mingyu had replied, “just watched my grandmother since I was young.”

Mrs. Ki had grinned at him, revealing laugh lines on her usually porcelain smooth skin, and within a week, had been given him a chef position, telling him it would be a waste to have him stay on as simply raw prep. She hadn’t even stuck around to supervise his first shift, disappearing god knows wherever she went all the time, a spa maybe, that kept her looking so young.

Draining his current batch of noodles, Mingyu looks up at Soonyoung, calling his name to snap him out of his memories. “We’re going clubbing Friday night, want to come with?”

“One of your type of clubs? Don’t you have a shift Saturday?”

“Live a little, hyung, I’ll be late for the shift whether I have a party the night before or not. And of course ‘ _my_ ’ type of club, what good are the straight people clubs if no one who goes to them can dance?”

 

 

 

 

 

Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, Soonyoung’s head rises immediately at the sound of the tinkling bell ringing above their hard to find doorway. He pauses from the task at hand of wiping down a table top in order to bow for the latest patron, quickly, a conditioned reflex.

“Yes, welcome to _10:10_!” He smiles at the newcomer, no eyes, all teeth, his signature ahjumma-winning grin.

But it’s no portly old lady toddling through the entrance. Where Soonyoung expects small he gets tall, where he expects stout he gets long legs that take confident strides, where he expects old he gets young, and where he expects a woman he gets a man, with deep auburn hair and full double-lidded eyes. No matter, they’re a decent establishment that gets good reviews, even if they’re usually only occupied by seasoned regulars. _10:10_ loses out on décor since it’s a small, old-timey place with plastic chairs and tables while some of the newer restaurants have shiny table-top grills and solid wood furniture, but the food is all cooked with home-made recipes, and Soonyoung’s eaten food prepped by all of their chefs – every single one makes a hearty, tasty meal.

“Are you meeting someone? How many people are you waiting for?”

The customer shakes his head. “Nope, just a table for one please.”

“A table for one?” Soonyoung blinks and his eyebrows rise before he can stop them. “Um. Sure, you can choose where you’d like to sit, anywhere along there.” He gestures with the rag in his hand at the row of two-seater tables by the wall, nearly forgetting to leave a menu behind.

“That’s alright,” the man says, settling into his spot in the corner of his room. Does he sound amused? If Soonyoung squints, it looks like the corners of his lips are lifted up slightly. “I don’t need a menu. Just a bibim-naengmyeon, please.”

Soonyoung crashes his knee into a chair on his way back to holler the order at Mingyu inside the kitchen, and it throbs while he tidies up the rest of the table that he’d been working on. He limps to bring over a jug of water for a group of four college-aged girls, and when he turns back around, he catches the man ducking his head, averting his eyes like someone who’d just been caught staring. It’s not terribly weird until Soonyoung brings his food out, placing down the six side dishes before the large metal bowl of sesame seed-covered cold noodles with hot pepper paste.

“Is your knee alright?” The man asks carefully, after murmuring a quiet thanks. He stares down at the half boiled egg in his bowl for a moment, waiting for a reply, while Soonyoung shoots a glance at his leg and mentally confirms that he was in fact being watched, not supplying an answer yet.

After another moment, the man pops the egg in his mouth and Soonyoung figures that means he can at least wait until the noodles are mixed – cucumbers, pears, and onions turning the same bright shade as the gochujang while the man expertly maneuvers his metal chopsticks through the heavy, chewy noodles. “Just a slight bump, that’s all,” Soonyoung assures him, smiling again. “Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

And he’s taken up on the offer, maybe ten minutes later, in the form of a request for more side dishes.

“Mingyu, there’s a man eating alone who wants more kimchi.”

“Then get him more kimchi!” Mingyu says out of the corner of his mouth, frying rice in a skillet. “You can do that much ‘cooking’ yourself, can’t you?”

Soonyoung tries to voice his surprise again. “No, you don’t understand, there’s a man eating alone?”

Mingyu doesn’t even muster the extra energy to roll his eyes. “You already know how I feel about the stigma against eating alone at restaurants!” He says, voice climbing with each successive claim. “It’s so stupid! What if you’re the only person who has a class at a certain time? Or you have to get from one place to another? Are you just not going to eat? It’s just weird! My roommate is an international student and he says people in China eat by themselves at restaurants all the time. It’s not a big deal anywhere else, so I have no idea why us Koreans are obsessed with thinking that it’s unusual to eat alone.”

“Oh,” Soonyoung says. Then he repeats himself. His fingers press at the plastic covering of their menu over the name of the restaurant, tracing the lettering of _10:10_ with a wary hand. “Okay,” he says. He unscrews the lid to a jar of their boss’s self-made kimchi and plucks out enough napa cabbage with a pair of clean tongs to fill the small dish in his hand.

Mingyu does roll his eyes this time, before turning around to scoop out the fried rice rice and drop a sunny side up egg over the dish. “If you’re that bothered by it, maybe you can go sit with him. Is he like a grandfather or a cute guy our age?”

“Is he...Oh. Well, he’s pretty young? And he’s kind of got that celebrity high cheekbones high nose bridge high forehead thing going on?”

“Perfect. Go on, Soonyoung-hyung, keep him company. At least he’s not hard on the eyes.”

He seriously considers it, thinks about slipping in to the seat across and asking what he does, what his name is, and so on and so forth to try and gauge why the guy is eating at a hole in the wall restaurant all by his lonesome. But by the time Soonyoung’s finished making sure all the other customers are taken care of, the table in the back corner is vacated, all the empty dishes stacked neatly the way Soonyoung prefers to carry them back for dishwashing, and the cost of the meal paid in exact change, bills laid in a neat stack despite the man never having looked at the price list.

 

 

 

 

 

It takes squishing and stuffing and muffled grunting to pull Soonyoung’s swollen duffle bag out of his locker. He hurries out of the staff room at the dance studio as fast as he dares. He’d slicked on as much of the heavy duty antiperspirant as he could after the shower he had taken at the end of classes, and his deep indigo dress shirt isn’t the kind that will easily reveal sweat stains, but he doesn’t want to test fate by exerting himself unnecessarily.

“Don’t you clean up nicely,” Mingyu says, whistling and drumming his fingers on the wheel at the same time. He’s got a thin long-sleeved black shirt on, something plain that turns into haute couture just because it’s Kim Mingyu with his broad shoulders and long torso that wears it.

“You say that like we haven’t gone drinking together twice a month for the past two summers or something.”

“Yeah well, it’s nice not to be in an apron.” Mingyu makes a vague hand gesture to his right. “This is Minghao, my roommate. Minghao that’s Soonyoung, the coworker that dances.”

“You said. We’re also parked outside a dance studio, in case you’ve forgot how to read.”

“Wow,” Soonyoung says, as it’s the only response he can think of to say. “Wow, this is your roommate?”

Minghao speaks with a bit of a foreigner’s lilt, the kind of tone that’s accented enough you know Korean’s not his native tongue, but he also speaks with a confidence that makes the accent a moot point, with his ability to turn phrases from collections of words into rounds of bullets.

“Yep. Not sure how either of us are still alive living with each other, but yep. When it’s in his favor to not to know what you’re saying, he pretends to be bad at Korean. When he’s with me, though, it’s just constant fire. But if you think about it, if he were actually bad at the language there’s no way he would have made it through admissions.”

“Or Yonsei’s just desperate, and its level really is going down,” Soonyoung jokes. “All of the latest rankings show we’re winning the Korea-Yonsei rivalry.”

“I really could not care less about the Yonsei-Korea rivalry,” Mingyu informs him, but the order of his words belie their meaning. He guns the engine, shifts gears, and pulls the car onto the road. His steering’s smooth and the car is steady, but more than once Soonyoung wonders if all of that distracted humming isn’t a bad omen regarding Mingyu’s attention to the vehicles around them.

“It’s not cheap being an international student at Yondae,” Soonyoung points out. “Hey kid, why didn’t you choose Godae? We have full rides for half the incoming international cohort and everyone writes a thesis so you actually deserve the bachelor’s degree.”

“Everyone knows Yonsei’s better,” Minghao says, with no concern for Soonyoung’s pride. “What would I do with a full ride? I have my own car.”

Catching Soonyoung’s bewildered eyes in the rearview, Mingyu holds up a hand and rubs his fingers together. “Minghao’s parents are super rich. This is his car even though he doesn’t have his license yet.”

“Don’t really need one if I’ve got you to do the work, do I?”

“Oh is this why you’re quitting at the restaurant?” Soonyoung asks. “Got yourself a new job as a personal driver? Out of curiosity, do you also function as his personal chef?”

“It’s not fair if you two tag team me.” Mingyu pouts. “And no, I’m quitting because I got into culinary school! So I’m actually transferring out of Yonsei and hoping with credentials I can actually find somewhere to work that pays better for the winter break.”

“Congrats!” Soonyoung’s surprised, but the lack of interest in the Korea-Yonsei rivalry suddenly makes more sense now. He feels two things about it. There’s happiness for Mingyu and sadness for himself that his favorite cook will be leaving _10:10_ ; the emotions don’t come one after another so much as simultaneously. “You dropping out of Yondae then? Are you still going to live near campus or?”

“Nah, gonna call it a gap year in case I wash out, so I’m moving back in with my parents. Minghao pretended to get angry at having to pay for the rent by himself, but then when I offered to find him a new roommate he got even more pissed.”

“Look, I never want a roommate again after experiencing _you_.”

Mingyu turns his head slightly sideways, an eyebrow raised. “You can make your own hangover soup tomorrow morning,” he taunts, before performing a perfunctory blind spot check and swerving into the next lane.

Soonyoung’s stomach does a flip at the lurch of the car, and then another one when Minghao reaches over and smacks Mingyu on the back of the head, hard enough that Mingyu’s entire body shifts. “No one wants to eat your food anyway, since you never wash your hands,” Minghao informs him, yanking Mingyu back into his seat by his hair.

“Can we not fight in the car while it’s moving?” Soonyoung pipes up, voice high and embarrassingly breathy. If he dies like this he’s going to make Kim Mingyu cook jokbal for him every single meal in the entirety of the afterlife.  
“Sorry, hyung. This is just how we are.” Mingyu laughs when Minghao releases him. “So, how was class today?”

“Six-year-old group tonight, so it could have been worse, I guess. They’re young enough that they’re just there to have a good time, unlike the nine-year-olds who are usually forced into it by their parents and don’t think dance classes are as cool as something like taekwondo.” Soonyoung detaches his fingers from the vice-like grip he’s had around the door handle, trying not to make eye contact with the passenger of the van Mingyu had cut off.

“Didn’t you say you used to do taekwondo?”

“Everyone does taekwondo when they’re a kid.”

“Point. Are you going to be teaching classes still when school starts? I mean, if you’re going to continue on part time at the restaurant, won’t you take evening and weekends shifts there?”

“It’ll clash with my class schedule since I have a six to nine twice a week so no dance classes over the semester. It’s not a big deal since crew will start up again and that more than makes up for it, to be honest.” They’ve pulled away from the van where the driver’s glaring at them and Soonyoung breathes easy again staring out the window and the passing neon lights, bright storefront displays flashing quickly and then disappearing before his eyes. He likes the dance studio job better because he enjoys dancing and he loves kids, and it pays more by the hour, but the scheduling for teaching lessons is inflexible. He can swap shifts at the restaurant, and he’ll need to do so when coursework picks up, to cram for midterms or write essays.

“Mingyu showed me a video. You’re really good,” Minghao pipes up.

“Thanks? I’d be down to see the kind of stuff you do if you have any clips.” Soonyoung smiles at the excitement that colors Minghao’s face, even if he tries to act flippant about it. Mingyu was right, he has the same bubbly openness as Chan, the food runner who did most of the dishwashing at _10:10_.

Minghao pulls out his phone to find him videos and quickly passes it over, temporarily blinding Soonyoung with his studded Valentino case that looks like it cost about what Soonyoung makes in a month, apparently not noticing that the hands he pushes the phone into are trembling from holding something so shiny and expensive.

“Did you load up videos before he got into the car? You totally loaded up videos.” Mingyu aborts a mirror check to look at Soonyoung again. “Honestly, we’re just headed back to ours and Minghao didn’t have to come along at all but once he saw the videos you have up online he was suddenly waiting in the car before I finished getting ready.”

Minghao doesn’t even blink. “We own scissors and I have completely free access to your hair when you sleep. If you’re into exposure, I’m happy to show people what you look like when you’re bald.”

In Soonyoung’s opinion, it’s a miracle that he makes it out of their death trap of a car alive.

 

 

 

 

 

After dropping off his things inside their apartment and sharing beers in front of the TV for a rerun episode of _1 Night 2 Days_ , the three of them set out at a leisurely walk. They barely take three steps before Soonyoung’s seeing bustling streets and flashing neon signs; Sinchon’s known for its nightlife after all. The sights and sounds are novel to him, not like the way he can recognize all the bars around Anam even if he’s not gone inside a specific store before, and the vibe is a little different, probably from the surfeit of people. But Soonyoung’s got two guides who are comfortable navigating side streets he would surely get lost in otherwise, and they lead him past large groups of mingling university students, around uneven corners, and into a small, tucked away crowd by a darkened doorway, with two bouncers standing guard.

Some sort of vetting process goes on that Soonyoung isn’t privy to, but the surly looking one stops glaring at him once Mingyu pulls him forward, and he shuffles inside before someone sees through him and pulls him aside, recognizing him as not one of their own.

“Relax,” murmurs Mingyu, hand still on his back. “You’ve got this. You’ve been here before. You know where the bathrooms are and you know now that you should knock first in case you interrupt a blowjob.”

If Mingyu thinks that’s the kind of thing that will calm Soonyoung, he’s sorely mistaken. Soonyoung doesn’t laugh at the mortifying memory of finding an unlocked stall, pushing open the dented metal door, and freezing so quickly he forgot to scream. He’d also been too petrified to close the door again, and the two occupants had paused before continuing on, seemingly happy to let him continue watching. Actually, Mingyu’s reminder almost makes things worse. The unsettling feeling in him isn’t exactly nerves, it’s just that every time he steps over the threshold, his foot also crosses a protective line and he’s wary of encroaching on a sacred space. Or at least a safe one.

They shuffle through a crowd towards a table – Mingyu has this thing about putting his back to a corner and scoping out persons of interest over the top of a drink glass because it hides his intentions or something – and the creative ways Soonyoung finds to avoid accidentally stepping on someone’s toes mirrors the non-physical contortions he makes to take up as little space as possible.

In the end Mingyu doesn’t find a person of interest.

A person of interest finds _him_ , and does so by tripping over his own feet and spilling a clear colorless drink over Mingyu’s shirt, halfway through his telling of the story on how he got Pretz sticks inside Minghao’s underwear once, and his mouth hangs open around the shape of an unfinished vowel. The smell of juniper slowly grows until it overwhelms the general whiff of alcohol and citrus emanating from the slightly sticky club floor.

The three of them stand and blink while the offender screeches, a loud nonsense syllable that eventually turns into a rapid-fire “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, it was an accident, I didn’t mean to do that, please forgive me,” punctuated by a series of bows that start off deep but get so frequent they become little more than shallow head bobs where all Soonyoung can see is the top of the guy’s head and the tip of his very pointy nose.

“How dare you!” Mingyu says, raising his voice and swatting impatiently at the damp cotton tee, although his frown slips into a grin that ‘Head Bob’ fails to notice since his head’s still down. “This was a really expensive shirt, and it’s ruined now. This is all your fault.”

Minghao pinches his nose and shoots Mingyu a look Soonyoung can’t read, while ‘Bob’ continues to stumble over any variation of apology he can think of. It’s almost turned into a chant the way he continues to repeat “please forgive me” in as formal a tone as possible. “It will take me some time but I’ll pay you the money to get a replacement.”

“Pay me?!” For a moment, Mingyu sounds like he’s going to spew some bullshit about how the shirt is irreplaceable, but then Minghao makes a threatening gesture with his fingers and he ends the charade.

‘Bob’ makes a sad little whimpering noise and Mingyu waits for an upward swing to lean down, not particularly far, and smile into his terrified face. “Aw, I’m just kidding, this was, like, 15000 won at UNIQLO. Why don’t you buy me a drink and provide better company than these nerds to make up for it instead?”

“Wh-what?” asks ‘Bob’, voice fading while being smoothly led away by Mingyu’s hand on his elbow to the other end of the club where they disappear behind two clumps of other university-age youths looking for a little something to satiate a thirst different from the one satisfied by watered down lager. Soonyoung laughs about the entire situation until he realizes that it means he’s standing alone with Minghao, who’s amusing but isn’t someone he really knows. He buries his nose into his glass, taking tiny sips to make the drink last as long as possible.

“Such an asshole,” Minghao mutters, “but…good way to pick someone up. Surprising.” He looks thoughtfully down into the bottom of his drink like if he’s distracted enough and sticks his foot out just so, someone handsome will spill right into his lap as well.

“Hm,” Soonyoung agrees noncommittally, still sipping slowly.

“You can try it yourself.” From his peripheral vision, Soonyoung sees Minghao casually leaning back on an elbow and tapping his right foot right foot, impatient to see some kind of reaction.

“I’m not really into other guys?” He says it slowly, and poses it like a question to be as inoffensive as possible.

Minghao darts his eyes over and then returns his focus to his drink, downing the rest before setting it down on the counter with a solid thud. “I can see that.” He lets Soonyoung attempt and fail to start several sentences before explaining, “In videos, you look like you – what’s the word – fit in your skin? But right now you look like you’ll jump if I poke you. So: not gay, or so far back in the closet you’re sitting on Mingyu’s leopard print trousers from junior high.”

“His—” Deciding that he’d rather not know, Soonyoung turns the proposal on Minghao. “Why don’t _you_ try it?”

“Yeah, I’m not really into anyone. At all. Ever.” He shrugs at no one in particular. “Although I guess it could be a fun kind of game.” After another beat he jerks his chin to point vaguely in the direction of the dance floor. “Are you gonna go dance?”

Soonyoung, still stuck on the fact that Mingyu’s roommate finds amusement from weird social experiments that involve getting pricey cocktails all over people’s clothes, misses the question. “Pardon?”

“I mean, you like dancing, right? Maybe it’ll be better if you dance.” Minghao shrugs again, a little asymmetrically because of the one elbow he’s leaning on being tucked underneath him. It occurs to Soonyoung that this his his way of trying to make him feel more comfortable. And that his suggestion is a pretty good one. “You’d better take my number down before you go though, in case you can’t reach Mingyu.”

“Will he even be headed back to your apartment tonight?” Soonyoung wonders, setting his finally empty glass down and digging into his pockets with the other hand.

“He has work tomorrow, so yes, unless he wants to die.” The slightly scratched up phone Soonyoung’s had for two years is a polar opposite to Minghao’s practically wrapped in cash new one, but Minghao doesn’t say anything until after he’s done punching in his info. “Done.”

Soonyoung reaches over to say, “Thanks,” and pat Minghao on the head, fully prepared to snatch his hand away in the event that Minghao swats at it, or to dodge any sharp rebuke with a quick grin before running away. Instead of hostility, Minghao smiles and tilts his chin up, rising into the fleshy part of Soonyoung’s palm. The sudden transformation into an apparently affectionate person puts Soonyoung more out of sorts, and frankly more afraid than if he were pushed away, which might have been Minghao’s aim all along.

That’s motivation to beat a hasty departure.

He quickly finds himself in the midst of a small throng, bunched together some ways away from the main cluster of people, grouped around the raised platform. The music is louder here away from the tables, loud enough for Soonyoung to notice the vibrations in his ear drums, and he can almost feel the hair cells in his cochlea dying off one by one. Because the group is off to the side, there’s no where to face except into the center of the isolated circle, Soonyoung’s knees bouncing along to the beat as he carves a space for himself, finding his element in the electronic track blasting from the speakers with the amplified bass reverberating through the floorboards and straight into Soonyoung’s chest, which also pops in time with the music.

The crowd moves like water around him, but he doesn’t notice, as immersed as he is in the rhythm and the sound, too busy slinking this way and that with his body to realize that he’s slowly becoming the center of the circle, him and one other man who hits positions like his joints are puzzle pieces clicking into place. The other man has the kind of spatial awareness that usually only people who regularly physically exert themselves seem to get, a formidable sense of balance and judgment of distance that impresses Soonyoung more than the moves themselves.

Soonyoung’s fully prepared to join him, taking the lead as centerpieces with the other man until he sees his face. It’s a familiar one.

“Do I know you?” Soonyoung asks, raising his voice above the din. He rises on his toes to bring his mouth closer to the man’s ear in order to be heard.

He receives a confused laugh.

Realizing how the sentence sounded, Soonyoung backtracks quickly. “I didn’t mean that to try a line on you, I just, you look familiar? Have we met?”

The man shakes his head and smiles a little before turning his head and disappearing into the crowd. It’s when Soonyoung sees his side profile that he remembers where he’s seen that face before – the same sharp nose as the guy who had come into _10:10_ alone the other day, who paid without needing the bill, and then left without another word. Soonyoung squawks, startling the woman beside him into opening her eyes and shooting him a strange look before returning to a hypnotic twisting dance with the woman beside her. There’s a strange tickling feeling in his stomach, something about the odds of seeing someone at their tiny restaurant and then at a bar days later. If Mingyu were here he’d say something about confirmation biases but he was probably too busy making out with ‘Bob’ to care about Soonyoung’s déjà-vu-esque encounter.

He slides back into the throng of people, moved by the thumping beat from a familiar boyband track mixed with a song he’s less familiar with, and he manages to stick it through for most of the song before the fuzzy feeling of ants crawling under his skin takes him out of the music completely. Soonyoung finds himself standing still with a man he doesn’t know grinding next to his hip, strobe lights beating brightly against his brow, and hot bodies sticking against his own where sweaty skin meets sweaty skin. He shouldn’t feel out of place while dancing, but it’s like Minghao had said earlier, he doesn’t fit. Something about him or the place or the air around him, it didn’t sit right.

“You weren’t gone long,” Minghao comments after extricating himself from a conversation with the server. He holds out a drink and passes it to Soonyoung, who takes too large of a gulp at first.

After getting used to sloshing down cheap, watered-down beer, the smoky scotch is a jolt to his system. Soonyoung sips slowly after that. “Just taking a break.” He shrugs his shoulders, rolling his joints back as if it will push off whatever discomfort has settled around his neck and let him finally enjoy himself. The weight remains pressed over him, however, no matter how many times he stretches or flattens his scapulas. “You having fun?”

“I’m practicing Korean. And the music – is fun.”

“But you’re not dancing?” The music is too quiet in this area of the building to feel it pulsating through your body, but there are still some people moving to it. Minghao’s kind of bouncing on his toes but he’s definitely got more in him than the current display.

“Heh,” Minghao makes a noise, shaking his head. He’s got a hard flush across his cheeks, red-tipped ears, and splotchy pink patches over his neck and the part of his chest exposed by his deep v-neck.

“It’s because he doesn’t want to fall over and embarrass himself. Again,” Mingyu supplies smoothly, sneaking up on them and placing a hand on Minghao’s back. He gets thwacked hard in the chest with one of Minghao’s fists, and barely recoils. “Honestly, he has the alcohol tolerance of a toddler but I think he has a bit of a platonic crush on the server so…”

“Hey! I drank a lot more than you!” Minghao’s speech is slurred in a way that makes it hard to discern where the accent stops and the alcohol starts.

Mingyu rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you’re also a lot more drunk than me.”

“Where’d your man Bob go, by the way?” Soonyoung interrupts.

“Bob?”

Oh right, that hadn’t been his name. Soonyoung didn’t think he knew the guy’s name, actually, but ‘Head Bob’ had seemed so fitting. “Um, the guy you were with, you know, the one who spilled his drink on you?” The wet patch on Mingyu’s shirt smells strongly of something minty and fruity, which isn’t terrible in comparison to dried puke or body odor or cigarette smoke.

“You mean Seokmin!” Mingyu’s face changes, from snooty smirk at Minghao’s tipsiness to pleased grin. “He’s really nice! Insisted that he wanted to buy me a new shirt and we’re going on a date in Myeongdong next weekend so he can shop for me. Well, he kept mumbling but nodded when I suggested that, so I think that’s what we’re doing. Got his number.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to date you,” Minghao suggests, mental faculties still with him despite the redness in his face. He leans back into Mingyu, seeming to save his energy, and Mingyu gives him an amused little smile before patting his back.

“Maybe he’s just never seen anyone as hot as me,” Mingyu counters.

“So obviously untrue since he’s seen me.” They bicker back and forth, never raising their voices high enough to be a bar brawl concern, but loud enough that it makes Soonyoung take a step back. He looks away, briefly, and his eyes settle on broad shoulders in a white button-up, trailing up a chiseled neckline—

“Fuck.”

Mingyu’s attention gets drawn by Soonyoung’s swearing, and he looks into the same direction as where Soonyoung sees the man, _again_ , loner eater, déjà vu guy, he wishes he had a name.

“Jeon Wonwoo!” Loner eater and the man in the grey blazer he’s talking to both turn their heads at the sound of the name being called, and Soonyoung’s eyes snap to Mingyu’s back, moving away from him and Minghao and toward the two at the other table whose conversation had been cut short.

“Wonwoo-hyung! What are you doing all the way out here in Yonsei territory?”

Grey blazer stares for a moment, caught between choosing to reply to the question and ignoring it, but it’s too late for him to pretend that he doesn't recognize Mingyu, and when loner eater nudges him with a question on who he is, Wonwoo caves with a sigh. “Mingyu, Junhui. Junhui, Mingyu.”

“Boyfriend?”

Wonwoo closes his eyes and pinches his nose, near the top, right between his eyes. “Junhui’s my foreign exchanger partner. He arrived in Korea yesterday, and we were in the area while I was showing him around so please don’t scare him off before he’s even stepped foot on our own campus.”

Soonyoung’s shoulders lose tension he didn’t realize he had, and then re-tighten. He frowns. That wasn’t right, he clearly saw this Junhui character in the restaurant a few days ago, so how was it possible—

“Scare him off? Like you were scared off?”

“I wasn’t scared off, what the hell, we were in high school—”

“—And I bet I’m still the best you’ve ever got.”

Before either of them can say anything more, Minghao smacks the back of Mingyu’s head, hard enough that there’s rebound. “Sorry, hand slipped.”

Wonwoo snorts. “Boyfriend?”

“Roommate.” Mingyu smiles sweetly.

To Soonyoung’s horror, the bickering becomes three-way, with Minghao alternating between decimating Mingyu’s pride and backing him up whenever it’s attacked by another party, taking jabs to Mingyu as personal insults while draped over Mingyu’s shoulders. There’s some kind of bad blood between Mingyu and his ex, but the kind of bad blood that’s been long forgotten and only trotted out just to have something to argue about. It keeps Mingyu amused, and Minghao, not knowing any better, earnest in his support. Soonyoung’s left staring at Junhui who has a slightly bemused expression on his face. “Junhui, right?” Soonyoung confirms.

“Yeah,” is the soft and slow reply. There’s still confusion all over Junhui’s face, like he can’t wrap his head around how he’d gone from talking to one person to witnessing the argument going on in front of him. “What’s your name?”

“Soonyoung. Kwon Soonyoung. You’re a good dancer.”

The next response takes even longer. It’s a surprised and painfully formal thank you, one that reminds Soonyoung of Bob—no, it was Seokmin—more than it reminds him of the man at the restaurant. Junhui’s fumbling Korean is too genuine to be an act and the man who had walked into _10:10_ earlier that week had been sure of his words, fluent, using the right consonants and grammar. No matter how alike the two looked, it couldn’t have been the same person as the one seated on the fake leather couch in front of Soonyoung now, blinking at him with wide eyes so unlike Soonyoung’s own.

“Where are you from, Junhui?” He shuffles over to lean a leg against the table, and Junhui’s attention shifts away from the still squabbling threesome toward Soonyoung. With their shoulders squared up, Junhui looks even broader, an inverted triangle with his narrow waist.

“China. Simcheon?”

Soonyoung nods, but if you asked him to place a pin on a map in the general location of that city, he’d have no clue if that was in the east, west, south, or north. He bites down a Simcheon to Sincheon joke. “And you’re here on exchange?”

“Yes.” Junhui nods earnestly, blinking those wide eyes at him. They’re honest massive. Soonyoung could probably get lost in them. “For one semester, at Korea University.”

“Why do you want to know?” Wonwoo wonders suspiciously, his attention wheeling around so he can pin Soonyoung with a beady gaze.

“No need to bite anyone’s head off. I’m at Godae too,” Soonyoung says, raising both hands in defense.

“Yeah!” says Minghao hotly.

Mingyu covers Minghao’s mouth with his hand. “That’s enough.”

Wonwoo narrows his eyes. “Really? What department?”

“Uh…business?” It comes out more of a question than an answer under Wonwoo’s scrutiny. Soonyoung squirms. It’s not like he’s _lying_ , he’s ready to tell Wonwoo all the courses he’s enrolled in for the next semester – financial accounting, operations management, marketing, corporate finance and…what was it again? Right, international macroeconomics – he has his official schedule and everything. But Wonwoo’s got a cold hardness about him especially with his disgruntled expression, a complete contrast to Mingyu’s constant warmth and smiles, and the hostility knocks the usual confidence out of Soonyoung’s system.

“I study international relations,” Junhui declares. He gives Wonwoo a silly grin when he gets swatted at. “What? Soonyoung’s nice! He’s my new friend.”

“You don’t know that,” Wonwoo mutters. “If he’s friends with Mingyu, he’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.”

“You were friends with me once. I distinctly remember we were _quite close_ ,” Mingyu leers.

“See what I mean?” Wonwoo hisses, but Junhui blinks at him without comprehending. When his gaze isn’t turned on you, Junhui’s eyes are a lot softer, and Soonyoung can see a whole layer of sparkles over the dark brown, almost black in the current lighting.

While Mingyu and Wonwoo’s argument continues to the side, Junhui whispers, “I think he’s scared I’ll get lost, but my Korean is definitely better than his Chinese.”

Soonyoung looks at the scowl on Wonwoo’s face and laughs. This seems to please Junhui, whose eyes curve and the shine in them gets masked by his eyelids, and who beams at Soonyoung for sharing in his little joke. Soonyoung feels warm, amply plied with alcohol, and giddy to see someone else’s happiness. “How about if you ever want a tour guide that doesn’t hover over you, instead of the grumpy one you have over here, you give me a call?”

 

 

 

 

 

In hindsight, giving your number to a foreign boy at a gay club after you ask him if you know each other on the dance floor probably reads a lot like a come on. Junhui sends him several texts a few days after their meeting, but Soonyoung waits until he has a shift with Mingyu again to open the messages.

“You’re being ridiculous about this, hyung,” Mingyu informs him. “It’s probably just ‘how are you doing’ but you’re acting like it’s going to be ‘let’s fuck’. Also, you were the one who gave him your number, but now you’re getting cold feet?”

“Is it going to be ‘let’s fuck’?!” Soonyoung’s eyes widen and his voice goes an octave and half higher than usual. “How do I respond to a message like that? How do I tell him I’m not interested?”

Mingyu scrunches his eyebrows and jabs Soonyoung in the side with the butt end of his spatula. “How would you tell a girl that you’re not interested? It’s not like gay guys are suddenly not people! And maybe he isn’t interested in you. Maybe he’s not interested in guys. Making assumptions about people leads to unnecessary misunderstandings, Kwon.”

“But he was at a gay club!”

“ _You_ were at a gay club. Come on, just open the message so you can go do your job.”

Soonyoung’s thumb hovers indecisively over his phone screen, and in his slight trembling, the pad of his finger brushes down on Junhui’s name, opening the conversation and revealing a photograph of Junhui with his fingers held up in a ‘V’ beside his cheeks. In the background are two wooden desks and a hairy calf dangling off the edge of a single bed, presumably Wonwoo’s. The caption reads ‘ _finished move in!_ ’ with a thumbs up emoticon, innocuous as they come.

Shuffling back to the stove, Mingyu opens his mouth noisily. “Wow, a selca, so scary.”

“Shut up,” Soonyoung says, while messaging back asking if Junhui had been given a tour of their school yet.

“I told you, didn’t I? You were really overreacting.”

A week later, when Mingyu shoves his phone under Soonyoung’s nose and pitches a whiney shriek straight into Soonyoung’s ears, Soonyoung doesn’t feel the slightest remorse about turning up his nose and refusing to help Mingyu compose a reply to Seokmin asking if he wanted to eat together some time.

 

 

 

 

 

When Soonyoung brought his mother to visit Korea University, she had complained that the entire campus was a slab of rock, the same monotonous grey color as far as the eye could see. It had been cloudy that day, giving the stone pillars and structures an equally grey background. Between the wooden walkways were newer, larger buildings made of glass and steel, but neither those nor the sloping grassy hills or tall, well maintained trees could convince her that there was beauty to this place.

Soonyoung had loved it instantly.

Then again, the first time he had set foot or eyes on Godae it had been a sunny day, and staring up at the impressive main gates gave him the sense that this was his fate. After years of joking that tigers were his kindred animals, the scuffed sewer hole covers with their custom Korea University Tigers logo seemed like a sign that he was destined to study his ass off and get into a big three university, this one in particular. There had been blue in the skies, dotted with fluffy white clouds. Underfoot were lush green lawns, and up ahead a vivid burgundy flag. Picturesque.

The day he takes Junhui on a tour is a sunny one too, with not a cloud in sight. After texting on and off for a while, Soonyoung seriously mentions giving Junhui a tour of Godae again, and they work out a time when Soonyoung isn’t scheduled for either of his jobs to go on a leisurely walk around the numerous plazas. Presently, a group of tourists mill around the gushing water fountain, posing in groups of twos and threes. Junhui takes photos on his phone.

“Do you want me to take one of you with the fountain?” Soonyoung asks politely.

Junhui laughs, face adopting a sheepish expression. He turns his phone screen toward Soonyoung. “I’ve been taking ones of myself already, so no need. I really like buildings.” He swoops an arm up and out, gesturing toward the long stone façade of the main hall.

“Yeah, the architecture here is really nice,” Soonyoung agrees.

“Architecture?”

Soonyoung takes a moment to explain the definition of the word before they set off away from the statue of Kim Seongsoo toward the grad school and central library with its carved displays and intricate design.

“Have you heard of hareubong from Jeju? That’s what these are,” Soonyoung says, pointing out the totems on the side of the path.

“Ah! Those. Wonwoo mentioned them, yes. I like them.”

“Has he shown you around, then?”

Junhui shakes his head, pocketing his phone after finishing his snapshots of the miniature statues. “He pointed out the buildings for our classes, but only that much.”

Soonyoung claps his hands together. That means Junhui hasn’t been to the museum yet, which they make their way toward after looping around the law faculty, sports hall, and business school.

The centennial memorial hall has a permanent exhibit on the school now, its history, and its development, which is boring on a good day. On the second floor, however, the extensive space is dedicated to a revolving collection of exhibits of Korean art and history. Soonyoung is normally too restless to enjoy museums or art galleries and their unnerving quiet, but something about the lighting and smell and layout of this one makes him want to slowly pace the floorboards with his hands behind his back, examining each artwork with an inquisitive glance even if he doesn’t really ‘get’ what it’s all supposed to mean. For the sake of the huge landscapes and delicate brush strokes, he can pretend to be snooty and persnickety at least for a while. Staring down at several pairs of wooden clogs, he finds the little details charming and strangely soothing in their ambiguous familiarity. So enchanted is he by the displays that he forgets he’s with Junhui until the other’s swaying catches his eye.

Junhui’s restlessness reminds Soonyoung of himself whenever his mother tried to instil some culture in him at folk galleries in his childhood, so he hurries his steps until they reach the terrace garden. No longer enclosed by four walls, Junhui extends his arms up toward the sky and grins at the sun beating hot rays down on his skin. Disappointment collects inside Soonyoung’s chest for not being able to make the excursion more fun.

One of the effects of the museum is that in discouraging chatter, the two of them could walk together wordlessly. After having exhausted the range of school-related questions out on the central plaza, Soonyoung’s left grasping at straws with regards to what to say next to this relative stranger. Out in the open again, he’s hyper-conscious of the still and quiet that stretches between them.

“It’s nice,” Junhui says, after he’s done stretching. “I like it.”

“What, the museum?” Surprise seeps unchecked into Soonyoung’s tone.

“It was interesting. And I like the school.” There’s a pause in which Soonyoung struggles to figure out if he should say something, but Junhui’s just choosing his next words carefully. “I’m happy,” he blabbers on, “for choosing here.”

School pride is a topic Soonyoung’s fluent in. “We’re a great school, of course you’re happy choosing Godae! Even Kim Yeona chose us. That reminds me – did you want to see the ice rink?” Soonyoung mimes skating for him, swinging his arms out and eliciting a laugh from Junhui.

“I’m not good at that. Moving. Exercise. I like watching?”

It’s Soonyoung’s turn to laugh. “Really? I’m not very sporty either, but I thought you were pretty good at dancing.”

“Ah…that…” Junhui scratches at the back of his neck awkwardly. “You’re better!” Then he gives an embarrassed chuckle.

All of a sudden, Soonyoung feels more comfortable. Here’s a guy who wants to fill in the silence, can dance but doesn’t do sports, and seems as restless as he is in quiet, confined spaces. Even if they don’t know much about each other, and even if there’s a language barrier, there’s enough in common between the two of them that Soonyoung thinks he gets him, on a basic level, despite the lack of understanding on the surface level.

The thought makes the rest of the afternoon go by with less weight on Soonyoung’s shoulders, although there’s an increasing ache in his feet and legs. They walk unhurriedly through the physical sciences and engineering blocks, before crossing back through to the medical school facilities. Traversing the three main sections of the campus takes a lot of walking, and by the time they’re nearing the university dormitories, Soonyoung’s calves are quietly screaming at him to sit down.

“So did you wanna see the health science area or head back—”

“I’m a little tired—”

Soonyoung and Junhui stare at each other for a moment, and Soonyoung breaks into a wide grin, clapping a hand on Junhui’s back. It’s a nice bonding activity, all of the walking, but it’s probably enough for one day, especially if Junhui will rarely be at that end of the school anyway. “Me too,” Soonyoung says, still smiling. “Why don’t we end the tour for today, and you can let me know if you want to go exploring elsewhere some other time?”

“Okay. Do you want to eat dinner together?”

Soonyoung’s voice jumps an octave in pitch. “I’m sorry but I’m not interested in men,” he says quickly, feeling that Mingyu would be quite proud of how he handled that situation.

“I…I don’t understand?”

“I mean, I know we met at a gay club but I’m actually interested in women,” Soonyoung rushes to explain.

Junhui’s eyebrows furrow and he brings a hand to his mouth, two fingers tapping on his lower lip. “We can’t be friends?”

“We can be friends! Just not boyfriends? Uhh, if that makes sense.”

“Men…Ahhh!” He gasps, then presses both his palms to this head. “I like Soonyoung,” Junhui begins politely, “but I came here to study Korean, not to find a boyfriend.” He gives a nervous-sounding little laugh, scratching at his scalp to fix his already tidy hair. His half-hearted laughter becomes a hoarse croaking and then fades into nothing.

Soonyoung attempts to retrieve his foot from halfway down his throat, unsure how to take back the stupid, useless words. The sense that Mingyu would be proud of him devolves into a sense that Mingyu would be rolling his eyes at him now, or berating him for making assumptions he’d been warned against and turning a normal situation into a mess, or just laughing. Probably just laughing.

Junhui continues to paw at his hair while Soonyoung does his best gaping fish impersonation. “When I said that, I meant we eat together with Wonwoo? I wanted to thank you.”

“Oh. Haha. Of course, hahahaha!” Soonyoung titters, acutely aware of the warmth in his cheeks. The laughter comes out forced and ugly sounding. He ducks his head a little, and it’s not hard to hide his face with Junhui already being taller than him. “Um, haha, why don’t both of you come to the restaurant and I’ll treat you instead? Since you’re the foreigner and all.” He’s not sure he can face the embarrassment right now.

“You have a restaurant?”

“It’s not mine,” Soonyoung amends quickly, still looking down toward Junhui’s shoes. “I work as a waiter, part-time, and Mingyu’s a chef there, or at least will be until classes start again. Which is soon. So you should come and eat his cooking while he’s still there. You remember Mingyu right? Wonwoo’s ex?” That had been a fun story to get out of him, once Minghao had been put to bed, not that Mingyu was able to tell the tale in a way that didn’t make himself look good, no matter how many times he said he was being honest.

Junhui gives Soonyoung a puzzled look. Ah, so not everyone was as forthcoming with the information then.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll text you the address with pictures, because it’s not that easy to find, and most people miss the _10:10_ sign.”

“Ten-ten?” Junhui repeats.

Soonyoung shrugs. “It’s just a cute sounding name, I guess. What time is it? _10:10_ , time to eat, or something.”

“I like it,” Junhui says. “It’s cute.”

It is a pretty adorable name, but after the day they spent together, Soonyoung suspects Junhui just likes everything.

 

 

 

 

 

“An end of summer party!” Mingyu crows. “That’s such a good idea, I’m going to pitch it to ahjumma right now,” he says, yanking apart the ties of his apron and shoving the fabric over his head and into Soonyoung’s hands before zooming out of the kitchen to where Mrs. Ki handles the cash register.

She peers up over her glasses at him, and puts down the wad of bills before sliding aside the calculator on the counter. Her eyes flit over to Soonyoung, who trails behind Mingyu with the apron strings trailing down. A crease forms at the top of her nose and Soonyoung quickly bunches everything up so nothing’s touching the floor. After clearing her throat, she looks back at Mingyu expectantly. “Yes?”

“Ajumeoni,” Mingyu sing-songs, “aren’t we your favorite employees? You love us, right?”

“The answer is only yes if the others aren’t here,” she says in a pleasant tone. Her fingers tap at the buttons of the calculator without pushing down.

“Then can you answer yes to another question too? Can we use the restaurant to have a tiiiiny get together with some friends? After closing hours! On a weekday.” Mingyu proposes it all very reasonably but the idea still makes Mrs. Ki raise an eyebrow. “Please? Just once. I promise everything will be clean in the morning, and you can dock whatever supplies we use from our pay – it’ll only be a few dishes anyway, because it’s such a tiiiiny gathering.”

The second eyebrow joins the first. “Alright.”

“Wait—really?” Both of Mingyu’s hands go to his mouth to cover the fact that his jaw has fallen open from surprise.

Mrs. Ki shrugs. “Well, I’m not getting any younger. If you don’t have fun with this place, who will?”

Soonyoung swallows the urge to point out that it doesn’t look like she’s getting any older either in the face of their good luck.

After she shoos them off, Soonyoung straps down for the start of his shift, and it isn’t until the end of the lunch rush that he gets to hear more eagerness from Mingyu. “It’ll be like a double date! I’ll get Seokgoo to come and you’ll have your Chinese boyfriend.”

Soonyoung swats at him with a dishrag. “It will not be like a double date because I’m not and will not date Junhui because, as you already know, I don’t like guys. And why are you calling Bob ‘Seokgoo’?”

“You say that now but you’ll see, it’ll be exactly like a double date,” Mingyu teases. “And why do you call him ‘Bob’? Anyway, Seokminnie thinks it’s cute, ‘Seokgoo’ and ‘Mingoo’, you know?”

Too lazy to explain the whole ‘head bob’ thing and too aghast to comment on the plethora of nicknames, Soonyoung shakes his head and turns to the unaddressed issue. “A double date and…what? Minghao and Wonwoo just aren’t people?”

“Not to me!”

 

 

 

 

 

“Look alive.” Soonyoung prods at the top of Wonwoo’s shoulder, fingertip meeting sturdy bone.

The vaguely angry expression that previously occupied Wonwoo’s face turns into one of surprise, and the beer in his mug sloshes dangerously around the glass before settling again. Wonwoo turns toward him and surprise turns into irritation once more. “What was that for?”

Around them, no one seems to have noticed the altercation. Mingyu’s outdone himself in a way that wouldn’t be possible if he had been cooking for Soonyoung alone. The table, covered in platters with all sorts of meat, can’t be seen from the quantity of food over top. His menu offered both noodles and rice, as well as soups, and an abundance of side dishes, as per the norm at _10:10_. Soonyoung’s eaten what must be an entire pig’s worth of spicy pork stir-fry, and chugged down the equivalent amount of water trying to fight the spice from the gochujang leaving a tingle on his lips and tongue.

The cutlery in front of Wonwoo remains unmarred by sauce remnants, his rice barely touched.

“You’ve hardly eaten,” Soonyoung points out. He feels a little bit responsible. The entire time he had been recommending Junhui dishes to try, carefully articulating the name of each item and watching Junhui’s lips form the shapes for each consonant so he could see whenever Junhui’s tongue or teeth placement wasn’t quite right, and then correcting him as they went. It wasn’t like Wonwoo, a Korean living in Korea, would have problems with the food. Or so he thought. “Do you not like it? I’m sure Mingyu can make you something else.”

Wonwoo picks up his chopsticks and pokes into the japchae with some trepidation. “This isn’t exactly what I expected, when Junhui came back and said that the three of us were going to have a meal together.”

Before replying, Soonyoung chews on his kkanpung saeu for a few bites. “I know the food at the dormitory canteen is decent for the price, but you didn’t really expect us to go there when there are so many restaurants in the area, right?”

“I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t a meal made by my high school ex, or consuming it while surrounded by him, his roommate, and current boyfriend.” Wonwoo sets his chopsticks back down and leans a heavy head on his hand.

“Ehhh, whatever! That’s the past, right?” Soonyoung takes a look at Junhui’s bowl and is pleased to find him digging into the beef short ribs. He barely helped with the food prep but feels pride at that, nonetheless. Turning back to Wonwoo, he folds the napkin in front of him and dabs at the sweat along his hairline. “Look, the food’s good, Mingyu’s a good chef. I don’t think it really matters what your relationship is like, or whatever, I was the one who invited you here so you might as well eat up. And see? Junhui’s really enjoying it.”

They both look over to Junhui, who freezes at the sudden onset of attention, blinking slowly at them as if to ask if there was anything wrong. Soonyoung notices sauce over the corner of Junhui’s mouth, and he leans in to swipe it off, brushing his thumb over the skin there a second time unnecessarily when he mistakes a mole above Junhui’s upper lip for more food.

“Sorry, I’ve been eating so much I didn’t notice,” Junhui says, ducking his head to wipe his mouth with a napkin even though Soonyoung had got most of it off already.

Soonyoung laughs, feeling his heart expanding at Junhui’s shyness. It brings out a protective side in him, seeing someone his age curling into himself like that, a side that wants to keep Junhui safe. “I’m glad you’re eating well.” He looks back at Wonwoo, thinking he’s proven a point.

“He said you were nice after you did that tour of Godae,” Wonwoo mumbles, only loud enough for Soonyoung to hear. He shifts backward in his seat, leaning against the back of the chair not quite giving off a casual air.

“What? Was I not supposed to be nice?” Soonyoung asks, less wary about being overheard. His glass is empty and he doesn’t want beer, but when Soonyoung grabs the plastic water jug to pour himself a drink, he lifts up an empty container.

“He thinks you’re nice,” Wonwoo says again, “he said he was glad to have befriended someone other than me so quickly.”Soonyoung squints at him, still not understanding, and still holding the empty water jug in the air. “Are you…jealous?”

“No…what? Are you kidding me right now? I’m trying to give you the shovel talk!”

“Huh?!”

Wonwoo sucks in a breath that sounds like he’s trying very hard not to hit Soonyoung in polite company and then exhales until his back is rounded and he’s resting his forehead on pointed fingers. “What are your intentions here?” The furious whispering is accompanied by quick glances to check Junhui isn’t paying attention. “Are you being nice or are you being _nice_? As his foreign exchange partner I’m duty bound to kill you if you hurt him or lead him on and trust me, I’ve read enough about serial killers and detective novels to make sure you die painfully without your body ever being found or me being implicated.”

“That’s…” Soonyoung shuffles back a little to put more space between himself and the terrifying glint in Wonwoo’s eyes. He flicks the lid on the water jug up and then down nervously. “There’s really no need for that. I already told him, I’m not gay.”

“Oh,” Wonwoo says, and eases up on his glare. “Okay. Um, you’re just, uh…eating dinner with a bunch of gay dudes, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Soonyoung hasn’t, not really. His university friends and childhood buddies never talked about sexuality, but then, he supposes, that’s a benefit that straight people have. Or, at least, he thinks they’re straight. Changkyun never stops talking about his girlfriend, and Jihoon isn’t dating anyone to his knowledge but there was that noona…That’s another thing. In most parts of his life, for good or for bad, Soonyoung operates under a ‘straight until told otherwise’ kind of pattern. Right now, however, he faces the direct opposite. Gay until shown to be, “The token straight.” He laughs, tilting his head back. “Guess that’s me, and every friend group needs one of those, right?”

Junhui finally cottons onto their conversation, leaning forward with an earnest look in his eyes. Although he’s been stuffing himself with whatever Mingyu’s made, Soonyoung notices that Junhui’s bowl of rice is untouched as well.

“I’ll be back,” Soonyoung says quickly, extricating himself from the situation. “Gonna fill this up.” He shakes the empty water bottle.

No one stops him from getting up or stumbling toward the kitchen. Mingyu’s so engrossed in Seokmin’s story, complete with voice imitations and physical re-enactments, that he doesn’t seem to notice Soonyoung standing up.

When Soonyoung gets there, the back of the shop is quiet. That in itself is not so unusual an occurrence, on slow days or early mornings, or closing shifts when they wait for the last customers to finish their meals because there’s nothing left to do but clean, the cooking and cleaning areas can have their restful moments. Today, however, it’s too quiet, too quiet without the sound of a spatula scraping against a wok, or a knife chopping against a cutting board. There’s no sizzling coming from the stove or sound of water running from the tap to cover up the noise from the dining room, a slew of giggles and chatter.

Like at the club however many nights ago, Soonyoung feels like he’s intruding. Standing in his own restaurant but he feels like he’s overstepping.

“That bottle’s not going to fill itself, you know.”

“Ahjumma!”

Mrs. Ki holds an unlit cigarette in one hand, the other is crossed over her chest. She leans against the tiled wall at the entrance to the kitchen and studies Soonyoung with narrowed eyes. There should be wrinkles and age spots from sun exposure on her skin, but it’s pale and translucent even in the harsh fluorescent lighting. If she smokes, then she _definitely_ shouldn’t look as young as she does.

“I didn’t know you were still here,” Soonyoung says, startled.

“You didn’t think I was going to let a bunch of young men drink and use a stove on my property without any supervision, did you?” Mrs. Ki tilts her head, indicating the back door behind her. “Come help me with something.”

“I was—” Soonyoung lifts the empty water container in his hand and jerks a thumb toward the water cooler.

“Your friends won’t die of thirst in the next ten minutes,” Mrs. Ki says, amused. “And if they do, I’ll just bring them back to life.”

“Ahjumma, you know first aid?”

She sort of half-hums in answer and disappears behind the curtain, the sound of her shoes on the floorboards fading as she walked down the hall toward the exit.

The summer air, so hot and humid during the day time, blows chilly in the darkness, although the insistent moisture lingers damp and clammy on Soonyoung’s skin. There’s two boxes waiting to be moved into the restaurant storeroom and stocked up on fridge shelves by whoever normally handles inventory. Probably a kitchen hand, but no one’s here now that they’ve got the place to themselves.

“Help me carry these inside, would you? My back’s not the same.” Mrs. Ki drums her fingers on the lid of a crate and smiles at him.

Soonyoung thinks she looks both too young and too old. Her eyes, warm and full, seem to hold the memories of a woman who’s lived to cherish hundreds of years of memories, but her face, youthful and supple, can’t belong to a woman who’s lived in this world very long at all.

“Wait,” she calls. “Before you do that…” Mrs. Ki hands Soonyoung her lighter, dark green, with a worn out logo printed on the side, that might once have depicted some kind of symbol, but is now just smidgens of ink left behind, the rest rubbed away over time.

He fails to spark a flame the first time, but on the second roll of the sparkwheel, orangey fire shoots up and he holds the lighter up to her cigarette, waiting for the flame to catch before releasing his thumb.

She pats a spot on the concrete beside her and Soonyoung waits quietly with her while she has her smoke, inhaling and exhaling into the night sky that’s not-so-dark with the nearby city lights. Even though Soonyoung watches Mrs. Ki tap the cigarette against the ledge and its ashes fall away, it never seems to get any shorter.

“You’re a business major, aren’t you?” Mrs. Ki asks.

Soonyoung jumps, startled. He doesn’t remember if he’d written that down in his cover letter or told her some other time. “Yes, at Godae.”

“Are you thinking of starting your own, joining one of the big corporations, working somewhere small…?”

He doesn’t understand where the conversation is going. Truthfully, he thought after university he’d work somewhere that paid the bills, an entry level kind of job with few responsibilities that let him spend time on the side in the studio, until his body could no longer handle it, and then he’d start climbing the corporate ladder. There had always been the thought of starting his own dance studio but it wasn’t one he thought about seriously most of the time.

“Why don’t you consider it seriously?”

Soonyoung’s surprised to discover that he had been musing out loud. “Something, um,” he stumbles but recovers quickly, “something about high risk but only medium monetary reward.”

“Seems like you’d find it personally satisfying though.” Mrs. Ki blows out a long stream of smoke into the air. “I’m of the opinion that if you want something badly enough, you’ll get what you want. That’s always worked around here, anyway.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know if I want it badly enough if I don’t even think about it for real. Are you asking because you’re worried you’ll lose all your part-timers soon, ahjumma? I’m sure it won’t be that hard to find more people looking for work in this economy.”

“Actually, I was wondering if you wanted the restaurant.”

Soonyoung blinks.

“God knows none of my children want anything to do with it, and I don’t mind if the place ends up closing as long as whoever’s running it likes the restaurant. It’s more valuable than they know. Meanwhile, you take good care of it while you work, and seem to enjoy yourself.”

“You’d just…give me the restaurant?” Soonyoung repeats slowly.

Mrs. Ki makes a tsk sound under her breath and snuffs out her cigarette, even though it looks barely used. “You’re too young. Sometimes I forget. Never mind.”

“Ahjumma! Wait, I’m just confused and don’t understand what you’re talking about!”

She jabs him in the back with a pointy finger and Soonyoung stands with a yelp. Then, she’s pushing him toward the door and yammering in his ear. “Bring those boxes inside, and clean up after yourselves when you’re done eating, you hear me?”

By the time Soonyoung’s sitting with the others again Junhui seems to have forced Wonwoo into eating, and has moved onto telling Minghao about his family. But as soon as he sees Soonyoung, he grins and Soonyoung smiles back cagily.

It’s disorienting, how weird and out of place he feels, despite the fact that he’s on home turf. Like he’s having an out of body experience, or someone else has taken his place. Everything feels wrong somehow, but in a way that’s only noticeable to him. A chicken with all its feathers stroked the wrong direction, or the taps for a water faucet swapped so hot is cold and cold is hot.

Though, when someone smiles at you the way Junhui’s smiling at Soonyoung now, it’s easier to ignore the unease and believe that everything will turn out just fine.

 

 

 

 

 

Like every summer, the last days before classes whip through like a storm, time bending to zoom Soonyoung along until he’s sitting in one of the long lecture halls again, trying to not fall asleep at the sound of the university professors’ voices, rubbing elbows with classmates and acquaintances, groaning at the growing pile of readings and work to be completed. This year in particular, the week before classes flies by so quickly Soonyoung doesn’t have time to brace himself for the onslaught of stress, spending too much time involved in the dance studio’s summer recital for the kids. He’s scrambling to find a planner halfway through the first week back, no longer spoiled by the slow summer days where he could leave work behind at work and not have to worry about a million things coming up next in his schedule the way it feels with school.

Speeding up the pace of each day even further is the restlessness which had not left Soonyoung since Mrs. Ki’s smoke break, a simmering question about his future that he avoids by moving quickly throughout his daily tasks, completing concrete achievements that distracted from vague and murky unknowns. Unfortunately, the restlessness stuck to Soonyoung’s brain like glue, a newly formed mass of glial cells eating away at him, occupying not enough space in his mind for him to turn his full attention towards it, but enough that talking about work or further plans outside the classroom grated on him.

On his way to the first dance practice of the semester, Soonyoung passes the centennial memorial hall and remembers his visit to the museum there with Junhui, whom he hadn’t heard from since Mingyu made them all dinner at _10:10_. Not that it’s necessarily Junhui’s fault, not when Soonyoung’s been bad at checking his phone for messages from his friends for the recent while, too busy trying to sort the rest of his life out.

The dance crew held most rehearsals on weekday evenings, sometimes Saturday mornings, rarely on Sundays because no one seemed to want to do anything productive on Sundays. Saturday afternoons, though usually a time when people didn’t have class and were wide awake, were scheduled out for auditioners, the members of their group who went to weekly trials for entertainment companies, as back-up dancers, performers, choreographers, or other competitive dance groups. To more than a few of them, the college dance club served as a stepping stone to something greater and grander.

Soonyoung always thought this much was fine. He doesn’t want to be a professional anything, he just wants to enjoy himself while he still can, and he knows he’s not alone. Youngmin-hyung had always been talented, but after finishing up as captain this year, he was planning on quitting dance and working full time at his dad’s law firm. Shiah-noona had turned down the captaincy this year because she thought it might interfere with her commitments on the editing team of the school newspaper, and she was planning on going into journalism full time with her degree after university. On paper, Soonyoung believed he would join their ranks, hopefully bagging work at one of the Korean companies in Fortune’s Global 500, and moving on from dance. But now…

Well, Soonyoung thinks, owning a dance studio, running classes, that kind of thing, it wouldn’t be that different from the jobs he’s already doing. And he likes it. Sure it’s a lot of running around like a headless chicken, especially when the kids don’t listen to him or something outside of his control goes wrong, but it’s _fun_.

“Soonyoung?”

Soonyoung whirls around at the sound of his name, shocked to find Junhui standing a few feet away, under the arch at the entrance of the central library. He wishes Junhui would teach him his tricks, the déjà vu and showing up when you speak of the devil. “Junhui?”

“Ah, it is you!”

Soonyoung laughs. “You shouldn’t be this surprised, we do go to the same school after all.”

The nod Junhui gives him at that can only be described as eager, Junhui's eyes wide and curious. “Sorry I was such a burden to you this summer! I’m very thankful to you for showing me around and inviting me to eat.”

“What do you mean a burden? It was my pleasure, Junhui.” Soonyoung offers him an easy smile, closed-lipped and curved eyes, endeared as always to his genuine nature and open expression.

“I’m sure you’re very busy, but you still walked all around campus with me, which was very kind of you! And then after that, you were the one to treat us to a meal.” Junhui pulls on the backpack strap slipping off his shoulders and slides it up closer to his neck. With his head down and back hunched, he looks almost nervous. “Wonwoo and I felt really bad that we didn’t repay the favor, and we’ve been meaning to ask if you wanted to have a meal together around campus when you have some free time.”

“Wonwoo? Are you sure it’s not just you?” It had slipped his mind for a bit but Soonyoung remembers the serial killer threats, even if Junhui hadn’t heard them.

Junhui laughs, and it’s such an amusingly dry kind of chuckle that Soonyoung wants to make a laugh of his own. “Wonwoo’s nice, he just doesn’t like it when people _know_ that he’s nice.”

“Are you sure? He’s not been keeping you locked up in your room has he? Have you gotten a chance to check out the social activities here?” Soonyoung asks skeptically. He glances down at his watch to check that he still has time before practice. “How have your first few classes at Godae been?”

“No, everything’s been great! Everyone’s been very nice to me and Wonwoo can be helpful if he wants to as well. Are you headed somewhere now?” Junhui voices his question politely, and it pulls him back into the timid pose again.

“Uh, yeah, to the rec center. There’s dance practice today.”

A light goes off in Junhui’s eyes again, pushing the jittery tension out of him and replacing it with a genuine curiosity. “Right! I remember, you’re a very good dancer.”

Soonyoung laughs and inclines his head. “Yeah, well.” He’s not going to pretend otherwise. “Listen, I have to go but why don’t you text me a time you’re free and we’ll make plans for something? I’m not saying this to get a free meal off of you, but you should make the most of your time in Korea, and there’s a lot of stuff you can do, places you can tour around and all that. Or we can stay on campus.”

“Okay,” Junhui assents, “I’d like that. I want to see _all_ of Korea.” He stretches his arms out as if to encompass the entire country, and it leaves Soonyoung bidding goodbye to him with an amused grin.

He’s sets off at a (very light) jog around the corner and past the alumni hall, but by the time he’s taking the stairs to the studio room they booked in the rec center, Soonyoung can’t manage more than a heave, a pant, and a slow amble.

“Why are you smiling? You’re late,” Jennie informs him, holding open the door with an impatient tap of the foot. “You better not be late to auditions next week, or you’ll set a bad example to the newbies and make them think that they can get away with showing up to practice whenever they want.”

“Won’t happen again,” Soonyoung promises. “And hey, at least I’m warmed up.” Also, he can’t wipe the smile off his face.

 

 

 

 

 

The weekend after their serendipitous meeting, Junhui joins a school sponsored trip for foreign exchange students to the mountains in Gangwon, and comes back looking tanner and sprightly as ever. He shows Soonyoung some of his pictures of the Eastern Sea on his phone, and they come with an assortment of shots of Junhui himself, looking surprised and then happy and then serene to be in front of the water and huge expanses of rock and forest.

“You should have sent these to me!” Soonyoung tells him, laughing at a face Junhui’s making in the last photo, pulling on one ear and puffing his cheeks out. “Did you not have wifi while you were gone?”

Junhui shakes his head vigorously, then puts his phone to sleep and pockets the thing without looking up at Soonyoung. “We did…but…I don’t know, I thought it might be annoying if I send out pics like these to people who live in Korea. You’ve probably seen a lot of it already, and they’d end up filling the chat.”

Soonyoung laughs. “Just don’t send me too many and blow up my notifications, but I’d keep these! It’s good scenery photography for backgrounds and stuff.”

“And I look cute, right?” Junhui asks, finally raising his head.

“Of course!” It comes out easily, the same way Soonyoung calls Mingyu cute, or Channie cute, or even Minghao. But as soon as the words leave his mouth he wonders if they were the wrong words to say, given the way he and Junhui met was slightly different than any of the other meetings.

Junhui’s response, however, is an enthusiastic, “Thank you!” and followed by a quick, “Should we go now?” Like Soonyoung’s comment doesn’t faze him at all, or that it doesn’t mean anything much more than a casual compliment between friends. And it’s not like Soonyoung was lying, not when Junhui’s eyes are huge and he carries himself with a naïvety befitting someone several years younger than Soonyoung, rather than someone of the same age. It’s…endearing.

“Did you decide on where you wanted to go? I mean, you still have several weeks here so it’s just what order you want to see these places in, I’m sure you’ll see _all_ of Korea by the end of exchange,” Soonyoung says, teasingly mimicking the way Junhui had emphasized the word the last time they saw each other.

Junhui lifts part of his mouth in a lopsided smile. “I know you don’t have all afternoon so I thought maybe we could just do Cinema Trap today?”

“On campus? I have more time than that.” Soonyoung peered at Junhui and then glanced back at the university dormitory building. “Your exchange partner can take you there any day of the week since it’s so close. We could visit a palace, go shopping.”

“Xiening said that the theatre plays movies you don’t see in theatres and that I should go at least once since I’m here. And Wonwoo is, um, I don’t know what the word is in Korean. What do you call someone who does nothing…? Well, that’s not right either because he _does_ do stuff. He plays games on his computer and reads books, but he doesn’t really talk to other people? He just stays inside the dorms a lot. I don’t often see him out of bed.”

Soonyoung's brows furrow for a moment and then he bursts out into laughter. “Are you saying he’s an otaku? I can see it.”

“I don’t mind!” Junhui supplements quickly, although he’s laughing along with Soonyoung even as he says it. “He’s nice, but sometimes I want to go outside and he…doesn’t.”

Soonyoung pats Junhui’s arm understandingly, assuring him that he isn’t about to tell Wonwoo anything. “I’m kind of surprised though, wouldn’t he like watching movies then?”

Junhui heaves a great sigh, his whole chest expanding and contracting before leaving him with his chin dropped. “I asked him once about watching something, and he lectured me for a long time about the books being better the movies so I was too scared to ask again.”

“Wow,” Soonyoung says with a chuckle. “That’s a whole new level of pretentious.”

“Pre— What does that mean?”

As Soonyoung explains the best he can, they begin to make their way southeast toward the media hall. The fall semester has brought with it slightly cooler weather, but the clouds overhead trap moisture on the buildings and people walking around, the humidity pulling sweat out of the pores at Soonyoung’s neck. The walk from the dorms to that part of campus crosses through brick roads and green space, not a short distance, nor a particularly long one. They fill the time with discussions of Junhui’s adventures, interspersed with bits about what Soonyoung gets up to outside of class time, and then the differences between China and Korea that Junhui can’t help but notice.

They movie they watch is some kind of avant garde art house flick, only a touch less pretentious than Wonwoo's refusal to watch movies because they don't suit his media standards and prejudices from books. Junhui holds their shared popcorn but doesn't eat much of it, staring intently at the screen and listening carefully to every word. Even though he’s much taller than Soonyoung standing upright, the way he sits positions his head lower, slunk down in his seat. It’s funny, Soonyoung spends a lot of his time making himself bigger through movement and dance, creating huge stage presence and charisma with smaller limbs, but Junhui with his long legs and long arms always seems to be trying to make himself smaller.

If Soonyoung were to lean over, the top of Junhui’s head would fit neatly underneath his chin. It wouldn’t take much, they’re already sitting close enough that Soonyoung can smell a light whiff of shampoo from Junhui’s hair, and feel the heat radiating from Junhui’s thigh, resting close to Soonyoung’s own leg.

It almost— It almost feels like a date.

Soonyoung gently shakes his head to himself, clearing the thought away. It shouldn’t feel that way at all. Junhui doesn’t think it’s a date, and Junhui’s the one out of the two of them who’s interested in men. It’s not like Soonyoung’s never hung out with a friend before, it’s not like they’ve done anything romantic. It’s not like Junhui’s head is _actually_ on Soonyoung’s shoulder.

And yet, Soonyoung’s hands are clammy in his own lap and he shuffles them around, on his knees, over his thighs, clasped together, unsure of where they should go but conscious of them nonetheless. Junhui doesn’t seem to notice his fidgeting, maybe because he’s a restless person himself. It’s a lucky break because if he were to look over, Soonyoung’s sure that the flustered feeling eating at him will show on his face.

He’s still opening and squeezing his fingers into fists when they leave the theatre, although Junhui’s earnestness dispels some of his unease.

“I guess I still have to work hard on my Korean because I didn’t really understand the point,” Junhui says with a frown.

It’s such an innocent comment, and Soonyoung lets out a rumble of a laugh, loud enough to startle the actual couple beside them into giving him weird looks and shuffling away quickly. “Honestly, I didn’t understand it either. I think it’s supposed to be pretty and _deep_ or whatever, but it all goes over my head. Don’t think it's a problem with your Korean.”

Relief floods into Junhui’s face, the muscles around his mouth loosening and his eyes relaxing. He starts to laugh as well, a giggle more than the dry chuckle Soonyoung had heard the other day. “Oh I feel relieved, I thought I was the only one.”

The weird crumbly feeling in Soonyoung’s stomach lifts while they laugh at the physics-defying bullets in the water scene, and ask each other about obvious courses of action they would have taken if they were the characters in the film instead. Junhui’s type of humour is the kind that makes Soonyoung pause before bursting out into fits, and he says things with a mentality that Soonyoung could never predict. Their banter flows easily and friendly.

Still, by the time they’re back at the dormitories, Soonyoung has the weird sense that he should kiss Junhui goodbye…or something.

 

 

 

 

 

“Dude, I haven’t seen you in, like, years. I’m surprised you’re even alive to be honest, did you drink too much on the freshmen MTs or?” Jihoon levels Soonyoung with a judgemental look, his jaw resting on one hand. The sleeves of his oversized shirt extend up to his fingertips, and complete the sleepy comfortable look Jihoon has going on for their meet up to work on their financial accounting class project. Judging by the piles of notes that Jihoon reorganizes to make space for Soonyoung's stuff on the café table, comfort is necessary and they’re in for a long day.

“No, I’ve been going to class!” Soonyoung protests. “I’ve just been really busy lately.”

“With what, exactly? You’re too much of a homebody to be as unreachable as you have been for the past two weeks.”

“I dunno…dance. Work. School. Take your pick. You’re really going to hound my ass for leaving the house too often when you never leave yours?”

Jihoon levels him with another look. “I’m clearly outside right now.”

Soonyoung comes up short searching for a retort to that quip, and quickly ushers them toward starting on their mock-up report instead, although Jihoon grins at him smugly like he knows that’s an acknowledgement from Soonyoung of his loss. Soonyoung pulls his chair around so that he’s sitting beside Jihoon instead of across from him, and nudges Jihoon with his knee to make him finally relent and allow them to begin their work. They pour over balance sheets and statements of cash flow together, and then Jihoon types away on his laptop while Soonyoung peers over his shoulder and contributes advice that Jihoon mostly ignores.

If Soonyoung didn’t do his fair share of the work, Jihoon wouldn’t agree to continue partnering with him all these years later, after they first during the business school bonding activities the first years were forced to participate in. But in some ways, Soonyoung was the one who really allowed their continued group projects to flourish. Jihoon liked to have everything go the way he envisioned, and it had taken several trials of learning to trust each other before they’d established their current system, one that largely works. For them, anyway.

When they finish the report, Jihoon leans back in his seat and takes a long sip from his straw, the rich caramel color of his coffee drink paler now from being watered down by the melted ice. “Well, thank god that’s over,” he says, and then drops his plastic cup back on the table before slumping back in his seat. He blinks several times very quickly, as if only just noticing the dryness in his eyes from staring at a screen for so long.

“Finally. I can go home now.” Soonyoung stretches out his arms over his head and feels all the bones and muscles in his back and shoulders click into place. “I’m starving.”

“Buy food here then,” Jihoon mutters with exasperation. He leans back toward his laptop, double-checking that their files are all saved before navigating to some computer game.

“You staying here?”

“Yeah.”

Soonyoung shakes his head. “All this sitting can’t be good for you. How long were you in this exact chair before I came in? Have you moved all day?”

“Clearly I get up to use the bathroom,” Jihoon says, rolling his eyes. “Just because you have dance practice a few times a week doesn’t mean you get to play the fitness card over me, Kwon.”

“Actually, I would say that _does_ mean I’m fitter than you. Do you think all corporate is like you too, sitting around all day, never standing up? I think I’d die from circulation problems.” Finished putting all his belongings back in his bag, Soonyoung pulls up the zip and stands so he can swing his backpack over his shoulder. “Maybe I really should start the dance studio instead after all, that way I could actually move around and not die of heart disease.”

“You want to open up your own dance studio?”

“I didn’t say want, okay,” Soonyoung back-pedals. “It’s just a thought. A fleeting thought. Could be a bit more interesting than all this,” he says, waving his hands over the table to indicate the mess of number crunching and paperwork they just went through.

“It’s not like dance studios don’t need financial accounting,” Jihoon deadpans. He purses his lips for a moment and then arches an eyebrow at Soonyoung. “Where would you find the capital to start your own place? Wouldn’t it be easier just to keep working at the current one and then take over from the owner? You’d have an established pool of clientele that way as well. Also—”

Soonyoung interrupts Jihoon with an exasperated sound at the back of his throat. “Look, I said it was just a thought! We’re business students at a big three school, the path’s already paved to, like, Hyundai, or LG, or Samsung if you’re lucky. It was just a ‘what if’ kind of thing.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t open your own studio,” Jihoon says. “I was just thinking about the logistics of it. It’s not like I can’t see how that would be more interesting than shilling electronics for the rest of your life, or something.”

“Great, thanks for your approval, Jihoon, means a lot to me,” Soonyoung says sarcastically.

Jihoon smiles sweetly. “Don’t mention it, Soonyoung, you know I’m _always_ happy to help.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey Soonyoung!”

He runs into Junhui coming out of his marketing class, and the guy really must be spending a lot of time at the library for them to be bumping into each other so often on this part of campus. Surely the school’s too big and has too many people for two people’s paths to continue colliding as often as theirs did.

“You alright?” Junhui asks, catching up to him.

“Yeah, no different from yesterday I guess.” That’s when they’d agreed via text messages to meet the following weekend and walk through Bukchon to take a look at the hanok village before touring Gyeongbokgung Palace, after Soonyoung finished his lunch shift at the restaurant. “We’re still on for Sunday?”

“What?” Junhui asks, head snapping up. “Oh, right…of course…What are you up to now?”

“I have an hour until my next lecture, so I was just going to sit somewhere and grab a bite to eat.”

“Oh. Do you mind if I come along?”

“Of course not!”

That’s how Soonyoung finds himself back at the same café as the one where he’d been sitting with Jihoon only days before, nibbling on an overpriced pastry while Junhui cupped a mug of tea between his palms.

After taking a bite and brushing off flakes of crust from his fingers, Soonyoung looks up to see Junhui peering at him. “Were you studying just now, in the library?”

Junhui stares at Soonyoung for a moment before answering, his eyes never leaving his face. “Just doing a bit of research for my physics class.”

“You’re taking physics?” Soonyoung asks, leaning forward and spraying all crumbs all over the table. “Why?!”

“Physics for non-science students! I have to do a science breadth requirement and Applications of Physics in Our Modern World seemed like it’d be interesting, and hopefully useful?”

Soonyoung sits back in his chair again, carefully brushing bits of food into his napkin while acutely aware that Junhui is still looking at him. Junhui looks at a lot of things, it’s not really that big of a deal that his eyes are so wide and round and earnest, or that Soonyoung finds the sight so endearing. Tons of people with large eyes look cute because of them. “ _Is_ the course useful?”

“Well.” Junhui laughs a little to himself, earning an unwitting smile from Soonyoung. “What do you know about time travel?”

“Time travel? Is that still physics?”

When Junhui nods, Soonyoung can see the shape of his mouth in its natural set, the centre of his lips full and touching but thinner on either side, and Soonyoung thinks it’s a rather uncommon sight.

It takes a moment for Soonyoung to clue in that Junhui’s talking about Einstein.

“In his theory of general relativity, he says gravity is what warps spacetime, so people have theorized that if you could get a strong enough gravitational pull, a point of singularity, you could warp spacetime so much that it bends back on itself.” Junhui wrinkles his nose. “Does any of that make sense?”

“I think so? It’s like those pictures you see of planets on a mesh and it sinks down from the size, right?”

“Yeah. You’d be creating a loop called a closed timelike curve, and following it would make you travel back in time.”

“Junhui, are you saying it’s possible for me to redo exams that I failed?” Soonyoung covers his mouth to laugh. “It’s really possible to time travel? This class _is_ useful then!”

“I don’t know if it’s actually possible. Stephen Hawking threw that party for time travellers that no one showed up to…he doesn’t think time travel is possible.”

“But you’re saying it could be right? What about those paradoxes people talk about? Actually, wait, if it bends back on itself doesn’t that make it a circle, not just a curve? Wouldn’t you end up going back in time over and over again?”

Junhui’s long fingers move to his mouth, and there they tap lightly against his lips, barely spread apart while Junhui thinks of an answer.

Soonyoung has the bizarre thought that he wants to grab Junhui’s hand. To keep him from covering the pretty way his lips curve, of course, not to hold it or anything…that’s not much better is it?

The terrifying idea almost makes Soonyoung miss Junhui’s point. “It’s _supposed_ to be a loop, not quite a full circle. So even though you’d enter and exit at the same point in time, the path you take _should_ be different.”

“But how would you prevent yourself from going around again” Soonyoung asks. “Stuck in the circle I mean, like a time loop.”

“A circle…that’s what I don’t know,” Junhui admits. “It’s an important part of my research.” The sound of Junhui’s laughter tickles something deep inside Soonyoung’s ear canal, like it’s dove right past his cochlea, worming itself toward Soonyoung’s brain. The laugh settles inside him, impossible to pull out, impossible to un-hear as it rings in his ears long after Junhui’s returned to a more neutral expression.

“I think if you’re really gunning for an A in the class you should research how to actually show that this is possible or something.” Soonyoung swallows dryly, untwisting the knots in his stomach by focusing on the topic of discussion at hand. “I volunteer to be your first test subject. Maybe it’ll help me boost my GPA too.”

“I think I’d test myself first, wouldn’t I?” Junhui points out, but he smiles indulgently at the suggestion, undoing all of Soonyoung’s hard work trying to untangle the mess in his belly.

It doesn’t make sense.

Not the time travelling, strangely, that’s the only thing that seems explicable by science.

No, what doesn’t make sense is the fact that just yesterday, Soonyoung had been sitting here just hanging out with a friend, doing some work, talking about school. All things considered, today shouldn’t be much different, not when they’re simply sitting in the same café and still discussing school.

Yet with Junhui, Soonyoung’s mouth is dry and his stomach keeps doing backflips like it’s training to compete on uneven bars at the Olympics and with Jihoon it was like his stomach didn’t even know the location of the nearest gym.

 

 

 

 

 

After a dance practice in the morning, Soonyoung spends the Saturday after his and Junhui’s trip to Bukchon balancing plates at _10:10_ without much of a break. Usually there’s some reprieve between the lunch and dinner rushes, but perhaps because it’s the weekend, there seems to be a party trickling in every so often, and because they’re training new kitchen staff, everyone else rushes a bit more, having a hectic time picking up the slack.

Mrs. Ki puts Soonyoung on supervisor duty. Well, she puts him on supervisor duty almost every shift ever since that weird conversation they had over the summer when she oddly suggested handing over the restaurant to him. He gets paid a paltry extra 1000 won per hour, and has to hurry over to the cash register every time someone messes up. Once in a while, like now, he’ll stay there, chatting with Mrs. Ki if she’s around.

“All I want is for people to double check what they’re doing before the close the till,” Soonyoung murmurs, resting his head on his arm. In about a minute he’ll have to be lively and chipper again, but the moment’s rest lets him calm the irritation building up from having to clean up after other people’s mistakes.

“We can’t always get what we want,” Mrs. Ki says, acting all sage. “Although, I suppose, sometimes if we want something enough, want it to the point of singularity, you can bend the fabric of reality to make your will happen.”

“What?” Soonyoung asks.

“Don’t mind the musings of an old woman,” she says quietly, bumping the flat of her fist against her lower back, and digging her knuckles into the tight muscles there. “And don’t waste your thoughts on the shift workers, even if you wish you could go back in time and ask me not to hire them.” She laughs, a harsh braying sound, and goes back to massaging her own back.

The bell above the front door tinkles and Soonyoung doesn’t have time to think about her weird old person cryptic messages, he’s picking up two menus and a bottle of water and already headed to the front when he notices that the new patrons are old faces.

“Mingyu?”

“Soonyoung-hyung! Oh, I’m glad we caught you working today. I get to be served by you for once!”

Soonyoung seats him and Seokmin at the only remaining empty table, since the other most recently emptied booth hasn’t been cleared yet while the other waiter working slacks somewhere in the back. “I’ll take your orders in a minute. Mingyu knows what the best stuff on the menu is, although everything’s usually pretty good.”

By the time Soonyoung’s wiped down the other table and made his way back, Seokmin’s seat is vacant from him leaving to use the bathroom, and Mingyu orders them a soondaeguk and gamjatang after checking to find out who’s in the kitchen today.

“Why’d you come here for food anyway?” Soonyoung asks.

“We were on a date in the area and got hungry…seemed like an easy choice.”

“I didn’t know you and Seokmin were still together,” Soonyoung comments, adjusting his hold on some empty plates by his hip. “Guess the way you met was fate…even though it was really weird.”

Mingyu shrugs. “He’s cute and funny and I like him. We might have had an unconventional first meeting but…” Mingyu briefly purses his lips.“How would you know anything anyway if you never reply to my texts, hyung?”

“I don’t really know what to reply to your memes and dog pictures.” Soonyoung laughs. “It seemed redundant after the fifth time I just typed out the word ‘cute’.”

The expression on Mingyu’s face returns to a more light-hearted one, much more usual than the previous scowl. “I guess we never got used to messaging normally since we saw each other almost every day over the summer. But you could text first, you know.”

“Yeah, I…I’ve been busy!” Soonyoung gestures around at the restaurant. “Look how good business has been since you left.”

“We’re all busy,” Mingyu says matter-of-factly. “And if you’re so busy shouldn’t you get back to work? Chat with me on your free time, Soonyoung-hyung, like we’re actually friends.” He laughs a little and Soonyoung balances something in his left hand so he can mess up Mingyu’s hair with his right. As bratty as the kid is, Soonyoung’s missed him.

 

 

 

 

 

Kind of like every semester, hell week descends on Soonyoung before he expects it, leaving him no time to brace for the impact of a week with three midterms and a project due one after the other. Of course, the fall arts showcase happens the Friday before, giving him barely any time to breathe between class and practice, much less breaks to spend time revising for tests or writing up his report.

Soonyoung crams right up until the moment they have to go on stage, fingers clutched around handwritten notes while his eyes dart upward and then back to the page in quick cycles to check if he’s memorized the material yet or not. He has to trust his body and the weeks of rehearsals they’ve had up until this point, because if he thinks too hard about his muscles now he’ll psyche himself out and forget the choreography halfway through the music. After all, the extra dance practices are the reason for him falling behind with his coursework in the first place, leaving him with less and less time to go through problem sets. Jihoon would probably be laughing at him, if it weren’t for the fact that he’d probably spent the same amount of time gaming and procrastinating on studying for exams. They’d struggle through midterm season together.

Between the late nights in the studio and early mornings rushing to class, the sleep deprivation takes a toll on Soonyoung’s whole cognitive awareness. It must, because near the end of his solo routine he looks out into the audience, combing his bangs back with his fingers to get a heated response, he swears he sees Junhui sitting there, watching him.

The idea’s not entirely far-fetched. Junhui could have seen one of the flyers posted around the school, could have spotted the ad on the arts department’s main site, could have been told about the event through one of his friends, there was that other girl on foreign exchange with him who was Chinese and seemed to know her ins and outs around Godae. Soonyoung swears he saw Junhui, and for the rest of Friday night he does think it’s Junhui he saw, nothing unusual.

Except the next morning, when they meet in front of the central library, Soonyoung asks how Junhui’s Friday night went.

“Not very interesting,” Junhui replies with a laugh. “I was working on a paper for my physics class and Wonwoo fell asleep listening to the meditating music he said would help him study better.”

“Oh?” Soonyoung swallows nothing more than saliva. “You were in the dorms?”

“Yeah. Did you get to do something fun?”

“Well…” Soonyoung brushes it aside. As plausible as it was for Junhui to have attended the performance, it was equally possible that Soonyoung simply hadn’t seen right. The person Soonyoung saw, it was probably just someone who looked like Junhui, or it might have been entirely in Soonyoung’s imagination. Lord knows he spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about the guy these days. “It was something. How’s your physics essay coming anyway, have you figured out if time travel is really possible yet?”

Junhui furrows his eyebrows. “Did I tell you about it already? It’s honestly really confusing me.”

Even though Junhui has no problem continuing up the steps to head inside the library, Soonyoung takes a little side stumble. He hadn’t thought of Junhui as a forgetful person, and they had that whole long discussion about the subject in the café, not to mention he had seemed like he’d had a pretty good grasp of the concepts already.

“Are you coming? I hope we can find two carrels side-by-side, the library gets pretty busy on weekends now that there’s stuff to study for.”

“Y-yeah…” Soonyoung nods eventually, hurrying after Junhui so they can set their stuff down and get started on their work.

Soonyoung and Junhui don’t share any classes, so they can only each plough through their own textbooks, and if they get stuck, turn to looking things up online or in the class group chats, since they can’t help each other with their questions. Junhui keeps pulling out illicit snacks from his backpack to share with Soonyoung, and they huddle around the clementines and crackers and mango jello cups, peeling wrappers open very slowly so the sound doesn’t attract the attention of any of the other students who might get annoyed and have them kicked out.

Once in a while they’ll slide scrap pieces of paper with little doodles or notes to each other, Junhui pointing out the girl who had fallen asleep on top of her mountain of textbooks diagonally across from them, Soonyoung drawing cartoon versions of his own face making various displeased expressions at the banality of his studies.

But the weirdest part is whenever Soonyoung’s mind wanders, unable to be contained to the tedious notes and questions he should solve before the upcoming tests, he’s wondering about Junhui. There are so many things about him that don’t make sense, like why Soonyoung keeps seeing his lookalikes everywhere, whether Junhui really forgot their entire _not a date_ time in the café, and what on earth keeps compelling Soonyoung, every time he sees Junhui drumming his fingers on the desk, to want to reach out and hold his hand.

“Soonyoung,” Junhui whispers, leaning close to Soonyoung’s ear. “Do you mind waking me up…? I set an alarm on vibrate for thirty minutes but if I don’t feel it can you poke me? I just can’t keep my eyes open…”

Soonyoung can’t turn to look, but he keenly feels the weight of Junhui’s head on his shoulder, pillowed by the thick fabric of his wool sweater.

Junhui shares casual touches a lot, but Soonyoung engages in physical affection often himself. Having a friend nap on him would garner a head pat with anyone else. Heck, Soonyoung pets Mingyu and Chan often, Jihoon when he thinks he can get away with it, and even Minghao that one time. But the act of tilting his head to the side to hold Junhui’s head in the crook of his neck, between shoulder and jaw, seems so intimate Soonyoung can’t bring himself to further the connection by moving his hand. His shallow breathing certainly doesn’t help, nor do the letters on the page swimming in front of his eyes.

Soonyoung’s inner turmoil simmers inside him, unbeknownst to the peacefully sleeping Junhui, who even in slumber, expands Soonyoung’s endeared heart.

 

 

 

 

 

“What would Soonyoung recommend?”

“Hmm…” The dishrag in his hand gets tossed at the table that needs wiping down, and Soonyoung peeks at Mrs. Ki before smoothly sliding into the seat beside Junhui. “What did you like of Mingyu’s cooking that time? Or, actually, maybe you wanna try something new?”

“Maybe something new? Since I’m only here for two more months, I want to try everything before I go!”

“Sure,” Soonyoung says, leaning in so he can peer at the menu with Junhui, even though he’s mostly got it memorized. He thinks choosing something will be easier if he can see what Junhui looks interested in, craning his neck to get close.

“This looks really colorful,” Junhui suggests tentatively, pointing at the buckwheat noodles and not shying away from Soonyoung's proximity.

Soonyoung, however, notices how close they are and as he pulls away slightly, hoping not to bring too much attention to his nervousness, he can feel a gentle tug at his scalp from where strands of his hair had tangled with strands of Junhui’s. “The naengmyeon?” Soonyoung clears his throat. “It’s a little cold out…are you sure you want cold food? Not something warm, like a stew or something?”

“I don’t mind,” Junhui says shyly.

“Okay, you like spicy food right?”

“Yeah, although I know you’re not a big fan…”

“Well, I’m not the one eating.” Soonyoung laughs and stands quickly, bumping his knee against the table. He holds back a wince. “I’ll be back with a bibim-naengmyeon!”

After putting in Junhui’s order, Soonyoung brings out the plates for a party of four sitting in the corner, and then finishes wiping down the table he had been working on earlier. Mrs. Ki beckons him over when he stands, and he hurries over to see what she wants.

“Are you really going to leave your friend sitting there by himself?” She asks in a matronly tone, hands in her apron.

Soonyoung looks over to where she’s staring, and sees Junhui gazing out of the window, seated alone. It reminds him, quite suddenly, of one of their customers from earlier in the year, when he was working with Mingyu over the summer. The customer who ate alone and paid without a word. The customer who looked like he could be Junhui’s identical twin.

“All you have to do is ask, you know, and you’ll get what you want. That’s how I run this place, don’t you think?” Mrs. Ki directs her attention back to Soonyoung, who’s a bit too dazed to even consider her riddles.

“Huh?”

“I’m telling you to finish your shift early, child. I know you didn’t have lunch, and the rush is over, so go eat!”

“A-ah!” Soonyoung barely remembers to thank her. He washes up with his head murky, like it’s stuck in his own blanket of clouds. When he’s done, the kitchen has Junhui’s cold noodles ready and a quick pork stir fried rice whipped up for Soonyoung. He brings out both to Junhui’s table and slides into the seat across from him with a forced smile plastered on.

“Are you finished working?” Junhui asks, sitting up straight and craning his neck to look for a clock. The hair at the back of his head swishes around his neck seemingly in slow motion, and it reaffirms the sense Soonyoung has that he’s dreaming.

“Ahjumma let me off early,” Soonyoung says, and when he smiles his eyes crinkle naturally, even though he’s not quite sure of his emotions. It’s all the more striking now, sitting across from Junhui and his food, Soonyoung’s knee still vaguely throbbing. The déjà vu makes itself known in Soonyoung’s throat, stifling his ability to speak except to ask, “Junhui-ya, do you have any siblings?”

“Yes! A little brother,” Junhui answers brightly, somewhat to Soonyoung’s dismay. “He’s ten years younger than me though,” Junhui says, “so I feel more like a parent than a sibling with him sometimes.”

His laughter seems to break whatever spell cast over Soonyoung, and Soonyoung notices the way he fidgets with his chopsticks, looking at the food in front of him. This is what he likes about Junhui after all. Junhui’s genuine kindness, the tell-tale expressions on his face and his inability to conceal his feelings. Soonyoung can’t help but find that earnest innocence endearing.

“I have a younger brother too,” Soonyoung says, pulling Junhui’s metal bowl toward himself, “and an older sister.” He picks up his clean chopsticks, proceeds to mix sauce and vegetables together with the noodles, cut for easier eating. When he’s done, he pushes the bowl back toward a grateful looking Junhui.

“Thank you, I wasn’t sure…”

Soonyoung holds back the urge to cup Junhui’s face. He smiles. “No worries!” His voice comes out a little high, but he covers his embarrassment by shovelling a spoonful of rice into his mouth.

“Is it nice being the middle child? You get to have someone older than you to teach you things, but there’s also someone younger than you that you get to teach as well.”

“Nowadays none of us are doing anything similar so it’s hard to say…” Soonyoung laughs. “But when we were younger, all we did was fight with each other. Three of us but only two parents, you know? We were hard to control. I can’t even remember what we fought about, but it was kind of fun. I don’t think I was really ever alone.”

Junhui nods. “Even though I have a younger sibling, I mostly grew up as an only child. I had friends, but still, it could get lonely.”

Imagining it made something in Soonyoung’s chest constrict. A smaller version of Junhui, bright-eyed but alone in his room. The adult Junhui already had eyes like this, could the younger version of him be possibly cuter? It seemed impossible.

“I think I wanted to get away and try to be alone sometimes. Or, well, free from my siblings anyway. So I made my parents take me to all kinds of extra-curricular classes so I could make friends with people who weren’t related to me.”

Junhui looks up with his chopsticks in his mouth. He chews quickly so he can ask, “Is that how you became really good at dancing?”

“I don’t know if I was that good when I was younger! But I worked really hard at it so it became something I took pride in, I guess.” Soonyoung scratches at the side of his neck, caught between his own ego and modesty.

“I remember you said you were in a group at school right? Does that mean you perform? I’ll come see you!” Junhui’s eagerness is so exuberant it’s practically contagious.

It’s just too bad that the show had already passed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t think to invite you…it’s usually just a small thing compared to the competition in spring semester. I didn’t even invite my parents.”

Junhui gives him a bewildered look. “Even though you had a solo?”

“It wasn’t even really polished! I’ll work on it over the break when I have time and upload it online probably.”

“Ah, it’s different though, watching a video. It’s different from really being in the audience. I want to see Soonyoung dance!”

Soonyoung laughs. “Now? I guess I could still show you the choreography later, but there’s not exactly a lot of space here.” He gestures at the small space of _10:10_ , looking up and catching Mrs. Ki’s gaze. She smiles at him and he quickly lifts his lips in return, ducking his head in a miniature bow.

“The rec center is still open right? We should go back to campus and see if there’s a free room,” Junhui suggests, oddly attached to this idea.

“Really? Right now? You don’t want to see Myeongdong?”

Junhui sighs. “Xiening goes every week and sends me pictures of everything she buys. I’m a lot more interested in seeing Soonyoung’s performance than shopping.”

That’s how Soonyoung finds himself in one of the smaller free use rooms on campus, Junhui tucked into a corner at the front of the room, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest. It should be weird, dancing for only one other person, but it’s easy to forget about the audience when the music starts playing, and Soonyoung could do this in his sleep, moving like water and fire all at the same time, fast, sharp, fluid. He wants to _impress_. There might not be anyone else in the room but Soonyoung dances to keep Junhui’s eyes on him at all times, because he knows he’s good, because he knows Junhui thinks so too. Junhui’s wide-eyed fascinated look, his undivided attention, fixed on Soonyoung like a spotlight, with the brightness and warmth of a sun urging Soonyoung to grow. It’s an intimate sort of venue, an intimate performance, and the smile Junhui bares at the end, flashing a sweaty and slightly out-of-breath Soonyoung all his teeth, it’s an intimate sort of smile that he’s loathe to share.

By the time they finally part ways, the sky outside dark early and the onslaught of winter imminent, Soonyoung knows two things.

One: that somewhere in Seoul there is a man who looks exactly like Wen Junhui but is not Wen Junhui. Wen Junhui had sat in that studio and gasped and clapped and looked amazed too genuinely to have seen Soonyoung before. Wen Junhui had sat in _10:10_ without ever ordering a bibim-naengmyeon before. The other man, whoever he was, navigated Korea with familiarity. The other man and Junhui are different people.

And two, much more terrifying than the first: Soonyoung _likes_ Junhui. A lot.

 

 

 

 

 

Most nights, Soonyoung doesn’t dream, or he forgets his dreams by the time he rolls out of bed. This morning, he’s still thinking about the nighttime adventure standing in front of the bathroom mirror to brush his teeth, mind replaying the scenes from his slumber.

He’d dreamt of Junhui.

It had been an innocent enough dream, the two of them taking the Seoul metro and ending up in a barley field somehow. Then, they were drinking barley tea and sitting in a restaurant, eating gochujang out of a pot, and Soonyoung sweating all of the water out of his body. Somewhat strange but relatively mundane stuff.

Soonyoung splashes water over his face and dries off roughly with a clean towel, washing away imagined memories of perspiration clinging to his forehead. He pushes back slightly damp hair away from his forehead and sighs at his reflection. Is your ex-coworker’s ex-boyfriend’s foreign exchange partner on the off-limits list? Is wondering that a sign Soonyoung really has it bad?

Is this Soonyoung’s quarter-life sexuality crisis?

When Soonyoung dated girls in the past, it usually started with him thinking someone was pretty or charming. He’d think to himself that he liked her, even if it was just a little bit of interest. Sometimes he’d spend time with them and he’d develop a crush. Sometimes he’d ask the girl out on dates and as they got to know each other he’d grow to like them more. With girls he always knew how he felt, that certain people were special, and he pursued the relationship after the fact.

But with Junhui it was completely different. With Junhui it was like all of the getting to know someone stuff happened first, before Soonyoung had thought to himself that he liked Junhui. That it was even possible for his heart to flutter because of another man. But once he paid attention to himself, it became clear that he was reacting to Junhui the same way he did to girls he wanted to pursue romantic relationships with. The reversed order should have made things confusing, but instead it just made Soonyoung more certain that his feelings were genuine. He hadn’t wanted to like Junhui, and yet here he stands, his thoughts so consumed by one person that he’d even had a dream about them.

After a leisurely brunch, Soonyoung spreads his books over his desk to squeeze in a bit of studying. He gets through about a chapter and a half before his fingers are drumming against the thick pages, knee jerking up and down restlessly. There’s no one else in the apartment but it’s like there’s the weight of someone’s head on Soonyoung’s shoulder, the smell of a different shampoo in the air. It’s hard to keep focused on the economics of the world when Junhui keeps swimming into his thoughts like Soonyoung’s mind is his personal swimming pool. Soonyoung makes a garbled sound in the back of his throat, throws his pen down, and covers his face with his hands.

Mingyu picks up Soonyoung’s call after about three rings.

“Hyung! I can’t believe you’re alive, _and_ you remembered how to use a phone!”

“I can’t believe you’re awake,” Soonyoung retorts, but it’s accompanied by an amused kind of snort rather than any real malice.

“I like to sleep in late, not sleep in all day,” Mingyu says, putting on an unbefitting sage tone. “How have you been?”

They chat for a while about the restaurant and Mrs. Ki being weirder than usual. Mingyu then asks Soonyoung to talk about something other than work, since that’s all they ever discuss anyway, which just leads to a conversation about university, exam season, and the spread of textbooks in front of Soonyoung.

“Okay, but like, what about just how you are _now_? I mean, like you, Soonyoung, not just in the context of school or work. Are you happy? Sad? Angry?”

“Of course I’m happy. What would I be unhappy about?”

When Mingyu doesn’t have an answer forthcoming, Soonyoung turns the tables back on him.

“How about you then? How have you been?”

“Honestly? It feels like my life is finally coming together.”

Mingyu goes on for several minutes about his daily life, and culinary school confirming his sense that he’d much rather spend the rest of his life in an apron than a suit and tie, even if the scheduling is much more demanding than a regular nine-to-five. Because it’s fresh and unfamiliar, he has a lot more to explain to Soonyoung, and many amusing anecdotes stocked up to share.

It occurs to Soonyoung that Mingyu talks like he’s really excited about what he’s doing, whereas Soonyoung can’t really see marketing classes as something other than a course he’s obligated to take. He doesn’t need to ask Mingyu if he’s happy because Soonyoung can already tell that’s how Mingyu feels, and even though he still doesn’t think he personally has anything to be _un_ happy about, it’s less clear that he does have any real reason to sound so bright and chipper either. He can’t help but wonder where he’s gone wrong that he doesn’t have the same kind of contentment with his life.

“We should really get together again sometime so I can show off a little,” Mingyu finishes.

“Mm,” Soonyoung agrees quietly. “We can have a party like over the summer and you can cook for us…Maybe at Minghao’s place since he’s the richest out of all of us.”

“I wish! Good luck convincing that one to allow people into his space with the potential for getting it messy.”

“We can clean up after! You just have to not make a mess in the kitchen. Do you still keep in touch?”

Mingyu laughs. “Despite professing to hate each other we’re also kinda…best friends? And I’m sure we can find a space even if Minghao doesn’t agree, but…so…does this mean you’re still seeing your Chinese…friend?”

Soonyoung holds his breath for a beat before replying. “Junhui and I hang out sometimes,” he says, as nonchalantly as he can, and it’s not a lie. “How about you and Seokmin?”

“Are you drawing— Never mind, um, yeah, Seokmin’s over right now actually, singing in the shower. I’m surprised you can’t hear him.”

Mingyu laughs again, and Soonyoung knows what the implication was but he can’t find any mirth in him, fidgeting with the corners of a book in front of him and gripping his phone tight to his ear. “That’s good.” He breathes deeply, and then his mouth slopes into a genuinely fond smile. “I’m happy for you.”

“Aww, hyung, you’re such a softie. Thanks though.”

Soonyoung’s fingers flip through the pages of his book again and he bites down hard on his lower lip. It’s not enough to stop him from blurting out, “Mingyu-ya…can I ask you something?”

“Sure?”

“Do you happen to remember…like, how did you first realized you were gay?”

“How I realized…” Mingyu breaks off into a hum. Soonyoung knows Mingyu is astute enough to pick up on the unspoken subtext, and that he’s sharp enough to be able to guess this is the real reason why Soonyoung called him, their catching up serving as preamble to his looming concern. “Do you want the long version or the summary?”

Shame that cell phones don’t have the winding cords like they had in olden days, because having one would be convenient to fiddle around with now. Soonyoung’s voice wavers. “I think the long version.”

“Hum…I don’t think it was a sudden realization,” Mingyu says. “But when I was younger, even though I thought a lot of girls were pretty, I knew I wasn’t supposed to say that other boys were good-looking even if I thought they were.”

Soonyoung didn’t have so many qualms about that. He could admit, for example, that Mingyu was exceedingly handsome. Seeing Mingyu, however didn’t make Soonyoung’s chest constrict or want to reach out and hold his face.

“Actually, come to think of it, even in high school I wasn’t that aware. All of my friends were obsessed with this girl in the older grade and I liked her too because she was pretty and nice but then one day the guy sitting at the table beside her’s in the library passed me the soccer ball I’d dropped and my heart completely fluttered.” Very suddenly, Mingyu’s tone changes. “Don’t tell Wonwoo I said that, I know you go to the same school but your loyalty should be with me!”

“I don’t really talk to him anyway,” Soonyoung says.

“Okay, good. He didn’t know he was, ugh I can’t believe I’m saying this, _my first love_ and I’d kinda like to keep it that way.”

Soonyoung lets himself laugh but it doesn’t last very long before his mood turns somber and quiet once more. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that.”

“What, your heart fluttering?”

“Yeah, not because of a guy anyway. Until…”

“Soonyoung-hyung! You’ve dated women before, right?”

“Right.” And it wasn’t just Mingyu’s childhood thinking they were nice or pretty. Soonyoung had felt emotions and things. Wasn’t that a sign he was straight?

“Okay, but your heart doesn’t flutter for _every_ woman you see, right?”

“That’s true, I guess.”

Mingyu presses his lips together loudly enough that it makes a sound over the line. “I think people just like the people they like. That doesn’t sound like much of an answer but that’s the thing, people aren’t so easily defined.”

Soonyoung doesn’t have an answer for that so he stays silent, and the seconds tick by awkwardly.

“Does that help you figure things out…?” Mingyu tries.

“Uh. Well,” Soonyoung starts to say before curling the fingers of his free hand into a fist, nails digging into the fleshy bit of his palm.

“You don’t have to talk to me about it, hyung,” Mingyu says gently. “But I’m rooting for you. And I hope whatever it is you give yourself a fighting chance…Don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you even get started, you know?”

 

 

 

 

 

If it were all up to Soonyoung, he’d let inertia do the work for him. His conversation with Mingyu had been enlightening, but only served to confirm something he was already aware of. Not doing anything about the knowledge seemed easier, and scientifically sound, although physics was more Junhui’s area.

Unfortunately, Soonyoung is not the only acting object in the universe, and the force of Junhui’s message asking if he had time to do the trek to N Seoul Tower over the weekend is enough to set Soonyoung into motion.

“I feel like I should be studying something. Or writing something? But I don’t have any tests or deadlines at all this week,” Junhui says when they meet. He’s carrying his backpack in front of him, like a tourist, which Soonyoung supposes he is, but Junhui’s made leaps and bounds in his Korean over the past few months and he doesn’t _sound_ like a foreigner.

“The calm before the storm. We could meet up next week,” Soonyoung says, “but it’d have to be to study for finals.”

“Call.”

Soonyoung turns to look at Junhui and takes in the ghost of a smile on his face. “Really?”

“I know I fell asleep the last time we were studying but it was actually really productive! Being in the library with someone else, you feel like you have to work or you feel bad.”

“Yeah.” Soonyoung swallows. He’s not sure he remembers anything from their study session except the weight of Junhui’s head on his shoulder, and the cutely pinched expression Junhui gets on his face when he’s focused.

Every outing with Junhui seems oddly intimate, at least on Soonyoung’s part. Standing close on the train, walking side by side, chatting in close proximity because they’re squeezed together by the throngs of people out on the weekend, winter or no winter. Today’s trip feels especially like a date, what with all their activities coming straight from a romcom. He thinks about his sister’s favorite actors when they take the cable car, stare out over the hazy Seoul skyline, and wander around the souvenir shop showing each other cute trinkets they find. Junhui even takes the time to hang up a lock on the terrace, just like the characters in the dramas on TV.

“Did you wish for something?” Soonyoung asks, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his long winter coat, trying to keep feeling in his fingers.

Junhui doesn’t seem to mind the cold. His jacket is thinner, and his fingers continue to move deftly despite being exposed to the wind. If Soonyoung were a leading man type, he’d keep Junhui’s hands warm in his own pockets, or hold them, which is what he really wants to do. He stares at Junhui’s long fingers with a gleam in his eye.

“Yeah, to come back here soon! The semester’s almost over but it seems like a waste of my Korean skills if this is the only time I visit Seoul.” Junhui straightens his shoulders and looks back at the fence covered in locks. There are other visitors around them, braced against the wind, but Junhui is the only one standing with such upright posture. His eyes are soft, just like his smile, and the appearance of both softens Soonyoung’s heart. “It would be nice to find work here after I graduate.”

“You definitely have to come back,” Soonyoung says, voice clear. “You said you wanted to see all of Korea but you’ve only scratched the surface.”

His words draw Junhui’s gaze away from the horizon straight to Soonyoung’s eyes. Looking at Junhui full on is a lot. Sometimes when you see someone with a very cold gaze, you have to look away out of intimidation. Junhui’s eyes are open and earnest, and there’s something even more overwhelming about that sincerity than a harsher kind of look. Like Soonyoung’s leapt off the edge of the terrace, free-falling to the ground.

“You’re right,” Junhui says. “You still have to show me the rest. One new place a week, just like we’ve been doing.”

It sounds like a promise. Soonyoung hopes it’s a promise.

“What if I’m busy?” Soonyoung teases lightly. “How do you know I won’t have a really important job that doesn’t give me time off on weekends to go on leisure trips?”

“Oh! That’s a good point. I guess you’ll be an important businessman by then,” Junhui says, nodding.

“Maybe not though,” Soonyoung says quickly. “Maybe I’ll have started my own business, running a dance academy.”

“Is that what you want to do after you graduate?” There’s a line for the elevator to go down from the observatory, but it’s a much shorter wait than going up.

“Possibly? It’s just a thought.”

Junhui’s eyes scan over Soonyoung like they’re conducting an evaluation. “I think you’d be really good at that, really.”

“How would you know?” Soonyoung asks, a toothy grin following the question.

“I just do! You’re a business major, so I’m sure you can make money. And I’ve seen you dance, so I know you’re a good dancer. And…yeah! Do you remember when you first showed me around Godae? We talked about the architecture but I didn’t know that word. I remember everything you’ve taught me though. So that’s everything, right?”

With such an earnest set of arguments, Soonyoung can only nod and agree with Junhui, and then look after his back when Junhui finds a free spot to look through the clear glass.

Even though the university dorms are on the other side of campus from Soonyoung’s apartment, when they get back to Godae station, they end up walking together to the dormitory blocks, and neither of them bring up the fact that it’s out of Soonyoung’s way. Their conversation is light, about the weather and dryness of the winter in Seoul, the possibility of snow looming. It’s laughter filled chatter, and Junhui’s laughing and teasing when he says, “Thanks for the date, Soonyoungie!” after they arrive.

The skin around Junhui’s eyes is crinkled when he giggles, but Soonyoung doesn’t see it as a joke.

He steps forward. “If it’s a date, shouldn’t I be kissing you goodnight?”

Junhui laughs again, thinking it’s another joke, but Soonyoung takes another step forward, making it impossible to ignore their proximity. Junhui’s breath catches, and the sound of his voice when he speaks is shaky. “Soonyoung…?”

“I’d like to,” Soonyoung says. “I mean, if you don’t mind.” He stares at Junhui’s mouth and unwittingly swipes at his lower lip with his tongue, leaving his mouth wet. The whole day he’s been staring at Junhui, whether his hands or eyes or mouth, fighting the compulsion to touch and hold the person who, for months now, has made his heart want to beat right out of his chest.

Instead of saying something, Junhui grabs hold of Soonyoung’s sleeve, right by his bicep, and tilts his head to angle their mouths together. As far as kisses go, it’s a pretty innocent one, Junhui’s lips pressed against Soonyoung’s own and then pulling away, too quick for Soonyoung’s liking.

“I hadn’t really planned on that,” Soonyoung breathes out, heart beating so hard he’s surprised Junhui can’t hear it. Catching feelings for Junhui wasn’t just the most unexpected event of Soonyoung’s semester. It was the most unplanned thing of Soonyoung’s entire university experience.

Junhui smiles wryly. “Because you don’t like men, right?”

“Yeah…” Soonyoung says, his brain still caught up on the softness of Junhui’s lips, the warmth pooled in Soonyoung’s belly. But Mingyu was right. It didn’t matter if Soonyoung liked other men or not, because Junhui made his heart flutter.

“It’s okay,” Junhui’s saying, the words floating over Soonyoung’s head like a fog. “It’s not the first time someone’s wanted to know what it was like.”

“What?”

Junhui shakes his head, backing up into the foyer. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Junhui, I…I—” Soonyoung can’t figure out the words. He wants to ask ‘don’t worry about _what_?’ but he’s still thinking about the kiss, and half his brain has moved on to thinking about how to say his confession. ‘ _I like you_ ’. It’s such a simple phrase, it shouldn’t be that hard to say, but there’s a thick and sticky net in his throat, catching the words before they can leave his mouth.

“You don’t have to apologize! I said so from the beginning, I like you a lot but I thought we were having fun getting to know each other as friends.”

Right.

 _Friends_.

Even though they’d met the way they did, Junhui had thought of them as _friends_ the whole time. Back then Junhui had said, he wasn’t in Korea to find a boyfriend. And now…well, he’d made his position clear.

No matter how often Soonyoung thought of their time together as feeling like a date, the fact of the matter was: they weren’t dates. And Soonyoung couldn’t force Junhui’s heart to flutter for him.

“Stay warm on your way back, Soonyoung,” Junhui says softly, and then disappears behind the door.

 

 

 

 

 

Despite having agreed to a study session, Soonyoung doesn’t see Junhui the next week. The week after that, Soonyoung sleeps only a few winks and studies with rabid ferocity for exams, and then the winter break is upon them, Soonyoung taking half a day just to sleep and recover from the marathon of a semester.

He tries not to, but he thinks about Junhui all the time.

Soonyoung can remember the way Junhui was positioned next to him when he reviews material from before the midterm tests, and even gochujang and tea remind him of that dream he’d had not so long ago. His winter jacket, the central library, even the word ‘architecture’ - Soonyoung’s brain has made associations and they torture him day in and day out.

The thing is, Soonyoung is a man who knows what he wants. And he wants Junhui, has wanted him for far longer than he’d like to admit. But there’s something he values even more than getting what he wants, and for Soonyoung it’s a matter of pride. The rejection stung.

That’s why it’s such a surprise to him when Jeon Wonwoo comes hunting for him, a stormy expression on his face, looking like he had the last time Soonyoung saw him, which is to say like Wonwoo wanted to hit Soonyoung hard enough to knock him out.

“I warned you, didn’t I? I gave you the shovel talk and everything, but you still made him cry. For days. God, maybe even weeks. And he wouldn’t even name you so I could beat you up for him.”

“Wonwoo?” Soonyoung’s forehead creases. He’s already cutting it close leaving this late to get to work at the restaurant, and Wonwoo doesn’t look like he’s about to let him go any time soon. “What are you talking about? Can you get angry at me later?”

“What am I talking about? What could I possibly be talking about? Why on earth would you make out with him and then say you didn’t mean to? Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he’s just an object for you to experiment on! He genuinely liked you and you had to go and give him false hope only to break his heart!”

“What? Is that what Junhui told you?”

“Well, unless there’s someone else who looks and sounds exactly like Junhui in Seoul…”

Soonyoung’s too dumbfounded to mention the Junhui lookalike. He’s stuck on the complete misunderstanding. Soonyoung had thought Junhui wanted to be friends, but Junhui thought Soonyoung only wanted to see what kissing him was like.

It had all gone horribly wrong.

If he had just managed to say how he felt.

If he had listened to what Junhui was saying to him.

If he had been less in denial of his feelings earlier.

If he could redo it.

“Does…Are you saying that he likes me?”

“Does he like you? Junhui thinks the freaking sun shines out of your stupid ass,” Wonwoo scoffs. “Soonyoung this, Soonyoungie that…Let me tell you how awful it was listening to him pine for you. And then how much worse it was listening to him cry over you, you ginormous bag of dicks. He told you it was okay if you were friends, where do you get off giving a guy whiplash like that?”

Soonyoung interrupts Wonwoo’s rant when the other pauses to take a breath, replenishing the depleted air from shouting at Soonyoung without any breaks. “But…but I _like_ him? I didn’t…it wasn’t an experiment. I was being honest.”

Wonwoo lets out the breath that he had been saving up to start another yelling match against Soonyoung. “You what?”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re kidding me,” Wonwoo counters. “My life is a sit-com and someone just forgot to tell me.”

“Let me explain to him and apologize…I didn’t realize…anyway, it’s all just a big misunderstanding. We feel the same way. It’s going to be okay.”

But Wonwoo’s shaking his head, looking at Soonyoung with a pitying expression. “It’s too late. I can’t believe this is happening but his plane just left.”

 

 

 

 

 

Soonyoung shows up to work in a daze.

He gets two orders completely wrong, and ends up having to apologize both to the customers and the kitchen for wasting so much food. He complains about it being a rookie mistake, but Soonyoung accidentally closes the till every time before getting out the requisite change.

It’s on his third set of apologies that Mrs. Ki grabs him and pulls him over to the till and chastises him in a hushed tone, but not quiet enough that everyone else in the restaurant doesn’t know what’s going on. “What’s gotten into you today? Get yourself together, boy!”

“Sorry,” Soonyoung says, “sorry.” He doesn’t know how many times he’s said that today, but it’s not to these people that Soonyoung feels sorry. Mostly he’s sorry to himself.

“I’m letting it go because this is singular behaviour from you and normally you work well, but I think you should go home before you do more harm,” she says, drawing her lips into a firm line.

“Sorry,” Soonyoung says once more. “It’s just…I wish…”

Mrs. Ki rolls her eyes. “Didn’t I tell you? Around here you just have to ask. You could have asked me for a day off. I could have given you some break time.”

Soonyoung sighs and looks away. “I didn’t realize. If I could have done it again…”

“What?” Mrs. Ki asks sharply.

It’s the strangest thing – at that moment, Soonyoung swears he hears Junhui’s voice.

“Soonyoung, wait!”

He looks up, and it’s definitely not Mrs. Ki who said it. Besides, Wonwoo had said Junhui’s plane had already left. Unless Junhui was a time traveller there was no way he could be in two places at once.

Soonyoung closes his eyes. It’d be nice to travel back in time. “I wish I could,” he murmurs. “I wish I could do it all again. A second time.”

“Another time?” Mrs. Ki’s voice rings out and echoes in Soonyoung’s ears.

He opens his eyes to see Junhui’s face right beside Mrs. Ki. Soonyoung blinks. Junhui? He tries to reach out or say something but then—

 

 

 

✹✹✹ 

 

 

 

Mid-morning sunlight filters through the gaps of the off-white blinds. On the bedside table, a dusty alarm clock flickers alive, speakers fading in the first notes of a girl group song with a fast tempo that urges Soonyoung into consciousness, its catchy hook crawling through his ear canal and affixing itself to his brain with its fresh summer sound.

Another day begins. A good day.


End file.
